


The Art of Re-Fixing Sour Lemonade

by TricksterShi



Series: The Pie Bitch 'Verse [10]
Category: Original Work, Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Character Death, Gen, Ritualized Self-harm, character resurrection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-07
Updated: 2013-10-07
Packaged: 2017-12-28 18:41:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/995223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TricksterShi/pseuds/TricksterShi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Time is not a straight line.  It's not even a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff, if you'll forgive the geek-ism.  Time is a tangled web with no logical pattern with strands intersecting, occasionally exploding, and always moving.  Case in point: every variation of the epic Winchester saga.  It makes a great story but a shitty life because Adam dies and comes back and goes to hell in every retelling.</p><p>Not this time, though.  With knowledge of what happens in every world Adam is alive in, he hops through timelines and tangled story threads to stay ahead of the angels seeking to secure one of the last remaining vessels for Michael.  Time is running out, though, and as he fails again and again, Adam's last resort may only succeed in unraveling him out of existence, but not before he fixes what goes wrong in every timeline.</p><p>And if his half brothers would just mind their own business everything would work out easy as pie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. First Chapter

**NOW:**  
There’s a place that exists between pain and numbness, a kind of limbo where the mind whites out and everything explodes like a tank of gasoline from an errant spark. Agony is infinite. The world disappears. Language has no meaning. The whole of the universe dissolves into a single wrenching scream that stretches out into the burning white until the dark overtakes it.  
  
Dying is not pleasant.  
  
Coming back to life is even less so.  
  
Adam takes in air through shredded lungs and spasms, body going rigid and then dissolving into shakes and twitches. He’s got lightning riding under his skin, striking bone and nerves, illuminating his neural pathways, twisting his heart around in a corkscrew until it shudders out one beat, then two, then more.  
  
There’s a cry in the back of his mind laced with fear and confusion.  
  
Adam takes hold of it, of the soul, and forces it out of his new body.  
  
 _I’m sorry_ , he thinks. _I have to do this._  
  
Adam blacks out at some point. When he wakes up again he’s laid out on the ground in a puddle of sweat, piss, and shit in the middle of a perfect burnt circle. The air is thick with ozone. Every fiber of his body tingles with life and pain.  
  
Adam holds his hands out, turns them over and examines the trembling digits. All present and accounted for.  He still wonders, is what he just did considered murder or suicide?  
  
Adam clenches his fists and shakily gets to his feet. He forces the question to the back of his mind in a dark box with all the other dark, niggling questions and thoughts he can’t focus on.  
  
Adam stumbles out of the circle and wobbles, falling down again and again. He stops, forehead pressed to the earth.  
  
Adam breathes in.  
  
He breathes out.   
  
Fuck, this is getting so hard.  
  
Adam gets his feet under him, inch by agonizing inch. He plants the balls of his feet and pushes up, uses his hands to steady himself. He stands, waits, and takes a few steps.  
  
He has no idea where he is this time. Plains of grass and small slopes stretch out from one horizon to another. There might be mountains in the distance, but he doesn’t have his contacts so it could be anything. The sky is cloudy, obscuring the sun, so he picks a direction and starts walking.  
  
He has some Winchesters to find.  
  
Adam hikes along the flat land for hours. He comes across a shallow creek cutting through sand and peels his clothes off to wash. He smells like a ghetto gas station bathroom. The water is cold on his skin. Goose bumps prickle his skin.  
  
Adam spies yucca plant hanging onto the dirt of the bank by the last of its roots. Something, a stolen fragment in his mind, roars to the forefront. He sees women in doeskin dresses talking as they scrub bits of the root into woven garments. The root bubbles up, just like soap.  
  
Adam finds a rock with a small edge. His fingers are slippery and numb, but he manages to break open the root and tear a chunk away.  
He washes his clothes and himself, spreads his body and his clothes out to dry in the chilly breeze and weak sun. The sky bleeds red through his eyelids, and then darkens as clouds rolls in thick and chunky, like a giant spilled clam chowder on the stratosphere.  
  
Adam gathers his clothes and dresses even though the jeans are still soggy. The clouds turn black on one side, the dangerous kind of dark that will roll over the plains like wrath and disappear quick as a summer kiss, the kind that leaves a hole in the chest.  
  
He comes across a dirt road that winds its way to blacktop. Wind whips across the landscape and sets the heavy-headed grass to swaying down in the bar ditch. The world is not quiet, but less than loud. Surreal, heady. Adam feels like he could kick both feet off the road and float away lazy-like.  
  
He stops in the middle of the road and grips the horned pendant in his fist.  
  
This will work.  
  
The pendant grows hot in his hands. Wind kicks up dust. Thunder growls.  
  
Adam closes his eyes and concentrates on the pull he can feel in his head, can always feel no matter what time line or world he’s currently occupying.  
  
“Blood calls to blood.” His voice rasps in his throat. “Let the road be clear.”  
  
The words are stolen, just like everything else about Adam. He thinks they came from an old world nursery rhyme, or maybe a movie. It’s hard to tell anymore.  
  
Lightning cracks overhead like breaking bone. The pendant hums against his skin and images flood his mind: a diner outside of Atlanta, slow fans stirring the grease-soaked air, ketchup on fingers, a scowl, a laugh, a messy inked number on a folded napkin, traces of road grime and gasoline under fingernails.  
  
Adam gets a mental hold on the connection. It fuzzes at the edges, strained. He holds his breath, goes weightless, and lets the connection reel him in like a bug tied to a string.  
  
When he opens his eyes, he’s standing in a parking lot with the sun burning bright overhead. There’s half a dozen cars scattered around the lot, the gleaming black Impala among them.  
  
A weird sort of pang goes through his chest. Part of him thinks  _home._  Another part says  _Dad_. And yet another faction of him says  _run and run as fast as you can._  
  
Adam tucks the pendant back into his shirt and scans the lot and diner. Sam and Dean are sitting inside by the window eating. Dean, ever messy, talks with his mouth full, gestures with his hands, smirks in that irritating asshole way. Sam, across from Dean, picks at a plate of something with both meat and greens, chews and swallows before answering Dean.  
  
A crow lands on the hood of a rusted ‘52 Ford truck. It hops along the hood, eyes Adam, and caws.  
  
Adam flips the bird off.  Judgmental bastard.  
  
“I know what I’m doing,” Adam says.  He should not be talking to a damn bird, but at this point what’s a little more crazy, right?  
  
Adam flicks his eyes to his brothers. They’re still occupied with food and each other, of course. They always are, forever and ever and always;  _take your brother outside now, Dean, go-_  
  
Adam steals over to the Impala and ducks on the opposite side. He digs out a small knife from his pocket. It’s not much to look at, it’s small enough to fit in his hand, a blade and handle fashioned from chupacabra tusk thrice tempered in sage, pine oil, and heart’s blood willingly given. From his other pocket he draws out a fraying scrap of light-n-thread soul that is turning dull.  
  
Adam slices his hand open and smears his blood on the underside of the car three times for good measure. He tugs loose one of the threads and holds it to the blood smear until it sticks.  
  
Adam slips away as his brothers get up and leave the diner. They get in the car and pull out of the parking lot. He watches until the Impala disappears from sight.  
  
Adam heaves a shuddering sigh.  
  
Another thread down.  
  
The crow comes back, cawing at him in angry bursts. Adam flips it off again and wipes his now healed hand on a patch of bright green grass.

 

 

 

 

_THEN:_   
_Not every life takes place in the range of 2005 to 2014. Sometimes it’s earlier, sometimes later._   
  
_Adam has seen Sam and Dean land on the beach at Normandy and watched them sneak into German camps where demons and shape shifters and other monsters hid in plain sight.  Sometimes it was opposite and the monsters were kept in cages and experimented on.  No matter what world, it seems the Nazis had their obsession to create a perfect soldier, and sometimes that meant stitching humans together with spells and spare creature parts._   
  
_Sam saved Ruby from the operating table.  He won’t give her up, despite the picture of Jessica he carries inside his helmet._   
  
_Sam and Dean aren’t brothers there, but they act like it, and so all of Ruby’s tricks still work on the stupid bastards._   
  
_Normandy gives Adam a few clues that none of the other lives do._   
  
_One, devotion isn’t about blood or vengeance or relation. Something is hardwired deep inside Sam and Dean on a soul level. That’s the only explanation Adam can find as to why, without fail and no matter the obstacle, those two idiots find each other._   
  
_Adam is still with the unit when Sam catches shrapnel that severs his femoral artery. Ruby, still with them and manipulating both Sam and Dean while pushing Adam out of the picture, shows Dean how to summons a crossroads demon while bullets and grenades fly overhead._   
  
_Sam comes back to life with a rattling breath and a curse on his lips._   
  
_Adam, hands soaked in Sam’s blood from where he tried to stem the flow, takes a bayonet in the back._   
  
_He dies in some nameless field in Poland, staring up at the wisps of gun smoke obscuring the sky._   
  
_Later, when the angels resurrect Adam, he faces Lucifer wearing Sam on a field of dead soldiers somewhere in Russia. It’s winter and snow dusts the corpses like powdered sugar. Michael burns bright in Adam’s mind and the archangel screams as Sam drags them into the cage._   
  
_Down, down down._

 

 

 

 

NOW:

Adam has a list of names in head that he’s pared down from the tens of thousands. It took him what was probably centuries to find the most important ones, the people who stayed the same no matter what, and the fixed points in history.  
  
Adam visits Bobby first.  
  
It takes him two days by Greyhound to get to Sioux Falls, but that’s enough time to steal new clothes, a couple wallets, and make a supply run.  
  
Adam’s picked up a few skills by watching his brothers through many different worlds.  
  
The scrap yard is on the edge of the city and surrounded by tall fences. Rusting shells of former blacktop eaters are stacked on top of each other and laid out in a pattern of their own. Adam hitches his backpack higher on his shoulder and follows the main road back to the house. A large Rottweiler lifts its head and whuffs in his direction, but doesn’t move from where it’s lazing about on the porch.  
  
Bobby opens the door before Adam raises his hand to knock. Bobby looks good compared to the last time Adam saw one of his versions-  _innocent soul in hell, body laid out on gurney, flat lining_ \- and raises a curmudgeonly eyebrow at Adam’s hobo-esque appearance.  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“Hi, Mr. Singer. My name is Adam Milligan. I’m told you’re the guy I need to talk to about supernatural stuff.”  
  
Bobby gives him a guarded look.  
  
“And who sent you my way?”  
  
“Daniel Elkins. I met him a couple weeks ago, right before… Well. He was working on something else he couldn’t leave, so he told me to contact you.”  
Bobby raises an eyebrow.  
  
“You couldn’t pick up a phone?”  
  
“I couldn’t stop long enough to get to one.”  
  
Bobby considers him for a moment. Adam can’t see Bobby’s other hand, but he knows the man is clutching a bag of stones charmed to let the owner know if he’s being lied to.  
  
Adam has met many Daniel Elkins in his travels, sometimes before the funeral, but mostly after and one step behind.  
  
“Look, if you wanna cut me with silver and have me drink holy water can we get on with it? I’d really like to get some answers and sit down for a minute. It’s a long walk from the other side of town.”  
  
For a minute, he thinks Bobby is going to shut the door in his face which, well, that will make things harder but not impossible. Instead, Bobby opens the door wide, eyes narrowed.  
  
Adam hesitates only a moment and steps forward.  
  
And then into the living room. He gives Bobby enough space to close the front door and gives him a shrug.  
  
“Can we talk now?”  
  
“Take a seat, kid,” Bobby gestures to the couch. “What are you needing to know?”  
  
Adam puts his bag on the floor and blows out a breath.  
  
“Ghouls,” he says. “How the hell do I get rid of them?”  
  
Despite the many (many, many) lives he’s lived through, Adam has never yet found a way to prevent or kill the ghouls that get him and Mom so many times. He enters the world too late, or just in time, or the timeline is so different that it never figures in.  
  
He’s got some time right now. Not a lot, but some.  
  
Bobby tells him everything he knows about ghouls; how they eat the dead and assume their shapes, steal their memories. Adam’s gut churns. He is no better than the things that killed him and his mother. Irony, thou art a bitch. He shoves it away and listens to Bobby.  
  
Killing them is actually simple. Normal guns with normal bullets, exactly as if you were killing an animal or a person, or something silver, and then simply remove the body for a salt ‘n burn and bury what’s left.  
  
Adam takes it all in; partly relieved it’s simple, and also disappointed, as well. Maybe he’d feel better if these things had a specific and unusual termination ritual, something he couldn’t have possibly known or done at the time.  
  
 _Maybe, could’a, would’a, should’a. Stop living in the past._  
  
He asks to use the bathroom before he leaves. Adam cuts his hand and places another thread from his soul on the underside of the sink. He washes the blood down the drain, splashes his face, and avoids looking himself in the eyes.  
  
When he goes back down, Bobby is standing in the middle of the room. He looks a little glazed in the face, eyes distant and confused.  
  
“Thank you for your help,” Adam says, sliding around the man.  
  
Bobby shakes his head. His eyes clear for a minute and then cloud again.  
  
“What- what’s going on?” Bobby slurs.  
  
“I’m going to take care of the ghouls. Thank you for your information. You should probably lie down, though. You look tired.”  
  
Adam makes an abortive movement to help the old man to the couch. He bites his lip and wills the thread to work. A small pain in Adam’s chest creeps up, but he ignores it.  
  
“I am tired,” Bobby says.  
  
“You should take a nap.”  
  
“Maybe I should take a nap.”  
  
Bobby heads to the couch, body stiff and jerky. He lies down and pulls a ratty blanket down over him.  
  
Adam stays still until Bobby does sleep, then he moves to the trunks in the library. He opens the ones that are unlocked, digs through them. He finds a UPS box containing a silver knife. That should do.  
  
There’s an arsenal of guns in the other trunks he glances through. Adam hefts a few before he chooses a simple looking revolver. He takes a box of bullets and stuffs it all into his pack.  
  
Then he’s out the door as fast as he can run, the screen door slamming shut behind him. The dog jerks up and barks at him, but Adam keeps going, runs until his new lungs burn and his legs threaten to turn to jelly. He makes it back to the bus stop before the next one pulls out. He shoves his ticket at the driver and finds a new seat near the back, heart hammering in his chest.  
  
Two threads down.

 

 

 

 

_SHADOWLANDS:_  
 _Adam is choking on his own blood and scratching at the lid of an old coffin. There are moldering bones beneath him, and he can hear his mother pleading as those things with their faces tear at the flesh of her belly like they did Adam’s._  
  
 _He’s got sweat, tears, and snot running down his face. There’s blood in the back of his throat. He’s shit and pissed his pants._  
  
 _Adam closes his eyes._ Please _, he prays._ Please make it stop.  
  
 _Mom’s screaming fades away. Then Adam hears those things leave and it’s silent except for the weakening thump of his heart._  
  
“ _Mom?”_  
  
 _It comes out in a gurgle, he chokes. Adam turns his head to the side and spits, feels it dribble down his cheek._  
  
“ _Mom?”_  
  
 _Silence._  
  
 _Adam strains his hearing. Mom is still there, she’s still alive. She has to be. She’s so strong, stronger than anyone he’s ever known._  
 _Silence._  
  
“ _Mom, please.”_  
  
 _Adam’s fingers slip from where they are holding his guts inside his body. One hand falls by his hip and he can’t move it again. Warmth seeps past him replaced by cold. He shivers against the pull of darkness, tries to focus on the few shafts of light coming in the crack on the coffin lid._  
  
 _They are only ten feet apart, him and his Mom. After a while he can actually hear her, the wet coughs that come from choking on her own fluids. By then Adam can’t talk either. He listens as she chokes and settles and doesn’t fight anymore._  
  
 _Adam dies freezing and alone in the silence of the tomb. It’s a slow death, the kind that drags on for the rest of the day and half the night. He struggles for breath until his lungs are so full of blood that airflow is impossible._  
  
 _Adam dies seven hours after his mother. As an only child with a weird love of British TV shows and friends that live solely on the Internet, Adam has never been more alone in all his short years._  
  
 _Adam wakes up a few minutes later on a bed of sand and harsh scrub brush. A woman is crouched above him, wild brown hair fanned around her face, jeans torn and dirty. She has weird eyes. Rabbit eyes._  
  
“ _Best get up, I’ll fill you in on the go.”_  
  
 _She extends her hand. Adam takes it, disoriented from the lack of burning pain. The woman pulls him to his feet and pushes him to run._  
 _Above them, the strange swirling sky explodes with light, fire, and high pitched battle cries._  
  
 _They run across the desert and through hills shaped like giants. Things hit the ground behind them and throw up dust clouds. It makes him think of Saving Private Ryan, of the bullets and bombs and bodies hitting the water at the beaches of Normandy- and for a moment he_ is _there, surrounded by salty sea and blood soaked sand, crawling over the dead and covering for a soldier hunkered over a fallen comrade and-_  
  
 _The woman veers to the left and Adam goes with her. They approach the rim of a canyon that opens like a gaping mouth. Adam has just enough time to suck in a surprised breath before the woman jumps off the edge and takes him with her._  
  
 _They plummet._

 

 

 

 

NOW:  
Windom is almost exactly as it should be. A few stores are different. There’s no coffee shop on the corner of Main, instead it’s a parking lot for the movie theater, but that doesn’t matter much. Adam hitches his pack and finds his way home without much trouble.  
  
Mom’s car is in the driveway. The blinds in the living room are open. Mom is shuffling around the living room, picking up here and there, running a dust rag over the bookshelves. She’s probably humming to herself, something by Janis Joplin.  
  
She doesn’t know Adam isn’t coming home from the mountains with his friends.  
  
Adam deliberately turns from the house and continues on down the road.  
  
The cemetery isn’t that far from the house, just a few blocks to the south. Gravestones litter the earth like little gray soldiers frozen, waiting for orders. There’s a couple people around the place, some with flowers, others walking around the older graves taking pictures.   
  
Mom used to like that, presumably before she met John the first time and got pregnant with Adam after the initial ghoul debacle. But that thought is not at all helpful right now, so he shoves it away.  
  
Adam finds the mausoleum without any trouble. The ghouls chose one at the back corner of the cemetery among the oldest graves there. The groundskeeper pays it minimal attention if the tangled weeds are anything to go by. Adam jimmies the lock on the door and lets it fall open.  
  
It’s dusty inside, but there are tracks in the dirt, fresh ones. Mice, birds, and something like looks like human footprints.  
  
A high pitched whine starts in the back of Adam’s head. He’s frozen to the spot, just staring at that hole in the wall. His heart thuds hard in his chest. Sweat gathers in his palms. He’s not breathing right, can’t draw in enough air.  
  
Adam stumbles away and throws up all over some poor bastard’s headstone. He can feel phantom claws and teeth in his skin, feel them digging in and ripping his body like cheap cotton.   
  
Adam’s mind kind of fizzes out and when he comes back to himself he’s not in the cemetery anymore. Adam is crouched in an alley near the edge of town with his head between his knees and black spots fading from his vision.  
  
A panic attack. A fucking panic attack. If Adam had the breath he’d be laughing himself stupid. Out of everything he’s seen and what he’s done (what he  _will_  do) it’s something as ordinary as a panic attack that sends him reeling.  
  
Adam stays in the alley for a while. No one comes around except for a skinny cat that watches him with wary yellow eyes and disappears into a dumpster down the way.  
  
When he can move without relapsing, it’s evening. That means Mom is going to the hospital tonight, which means the ghouls will be waiting for her when she gets back.  
  
He gets to the house in time to watch Mom pull out of the driveway. Adam hides behind a tree, heart hammering against his ribs. When she’s gone he slips into the backyard and retrieves the spare key from the plastic frog by the back door.  
  
The house even still smells the same. Cinnamon candles. Dove soap. Those mint candies sitting on a bowl in the middle of the table, because Mom buys them in bulk instead of spending extra for small brand name packages.  
  
There’s a pie- blueberry, Adam’s favorite- on the cabinet by the sink, a note propped on top, waiting for Adam to get in from his trip.  
  
Adam wipes at his eyes and sits at the kitchen table. He takes his shoes off, puts them on one of the other chairs. He loads the revolver full and places it on the table within reach. He pulls out the silver knife and keeps it in his other hand, blade resting on his leg.  
  
He waits.  
  
The clock ticking is loud in the dark.   
  
Tick-tock.   
  
Tick-tock.  
  
Minutes crawl by. Adam’s eyes adjust to the near dark. Shafts of light from the moon and the neighbor’s back porch filter in through the kitchen window. He can see the outline of the furniture and appliances.  
  
Minutes become hours before he hears a scratching at the mudroom window. Then there’s a click and the window comes open. Two bodies lever themselves through it.  
  
Adam crosses the kitchen on silent feet and presses himself to the wall. The mudroom door handle twists and it opens with a soft squeak of the hinges. Dark shapes come in.  
  
They don’t look like they did last time. Last time they’d already taken on Adam and Mom’s faces, and wasn’t that a mindfuck to get eaten by himself.  
Now they are squat things, hunched over. Their skin looks smooth and a little slimy in the dim light. Not human.  
  
Adam fires the gun point blank at the head of the second ghoul as it comes out the door. Blood and brain matter splatter everything. The shock of it knocks Adam back, and then the second ghoul is right there in his face. He has enough time to see sharp teeth and big pale eyes before they land on the floor and the gun goes skittering away across the linoleum.   
  
Long fingers close around his throat and squeeze. Adam kicks and punches. The ghoul leans down close and bites down on the curve of Adam’s shoulder. He lets out a strangled yell and bucks. It throws the ghoul off balance and he scrambles away.  
  
Fingers clamp around Adam’s ankle and drag him back. He twists and brings the knife up. The blade sinks into the ghoul’s throat and Adam watches its eyes go wide.  
The moment hangs suspended. Adam watches the slow realization fill the ghoul’s eyes and then flicker. The features shift through a dozen different faces before they settle and Adam is looking into John Winchester’s face.  
  
Adam jerks back and the knife cuts through the ghoul’s neck like butter, leaving a red line that spurts as he severs an artery. Adam pushes the ghoul off of him and crab walks backwards until he hits the cabinet.  
  
The ghoul gurgles and gasps on its last breaths, body twitching, until it finally stills. Adam heaves in the silence, heart thundering in his ears.  
  
He makes himself move after a moment, unlocking his muscles, gripping the edge of the counter with shaky fingers. He has to hurry.  
  
Getting rid of the bodies is hard as hell. (Wheelbarrow in the shed Mom used for the garden, two hour trip to the cemetery using only alleys and empty lots, stopping to hide from passing cars, shoving the bodies into the crypt.)  
  
Cleaning up after them is easy. It shouldn’t be, but Adam is feeling kind of numb by then and he’s known how to get blood out of tile and carpet since he was six (and 17, and 24, and, once, the ripe old age of 32). He bags his current clothes and borrows some from Other-Adam’s room upstairs.  
  
Adam is back at the bus stop by six am and on a bus at seven. He hunkers down in his seat and pulls his hood up over his head.  
  
His hands don’t stop shaking.

 

 

 

 

_THEN:_   
_In one world John found him when Adam was nine and escaped the ghoul attack that killed Mom. He handed Adam over to Dean, much as he had with Sam, and left the motel room to hunt the ghouls down._   
  
_Sam wouldn’t talk to Adam for the longest time. Dean didn’t want to, either, but one hushed conversation from John and Dean was helping Adam with his homework and teaching him how to sharpen knives._   
  
_Adam was thirteen when he went along on a hunt. The creature- he can’t remember what it was now, he’s lived so many lives, sometimes they blur together- it knocked him down a ravine and Adam hit his head._   
  
_The doctors called it aphasia. Adam could read and write, but the words he knew in his head wouldn’t go out his mouth no matter how hard he pushed._   
  
_It was Sam, who had given him dirty looks, ignored him, and refused to acknowledge Adam most days, who learned sign language and then tailored it to work with Adam’s injury. Then Sam taught Dean, and then John._   
  
_Three years later Sam died on a hunt while Adam and John were in Ohio chasing a kelpie. Adam will always regret going with John, even though he’d desperately wanted to just be his age and have John to himself for a weekend. Dean sold his soul and got ten minutes with Sam before the hell hounds came calling._   
  
_John crashed the truck trying to get to a freaked out Sam in Oklahoma. He died instantly- never did like to wear a seat belt- and the next time Adam woke up two years had passed and Michael was whispering in his ear while the doctors went nuts over their waking coma patient who could speak once more._

 

 

 

 

NOW:  
Adam gets off the bus in some little town in Nebraska. He goes to the diner and orders the special and a slice of pie. The special is goopy and over salted, but the pie is good. It’s homemade, at any rate, with thick cut peach slices and a flaky crust. He snarfs it all down, drains his glass, and leaves a two dollar tip under his empty plate. The food settles uneasy in his stomach.  
  
Then he goes out and stands in the parking lot, just looking at the horizon, forming and discarding plans in his head. He knows a bit better this time, but that doesn’t mean the road is clear, and it’s definitely not easy.  
  
Adam still needs to get close to Meg, Azazel, and Ruby. They scare him on a profound level, though. He’s met them in many lives, sometimes fighting by his brothers’ sides, others when he tried to go off the map and create a new future. They always found him, not the other way around.  
  
Then there’s still the Devil’s Gate in Montana and that town full of psychic kids.  
  
Adam shudders at the thought of going back there. He’s been several times and it never gets less sad or creepy or just plain horrible. The old graveyard on the edge of that town is full of new bones buried in shallow graves.  
  
The miles and years stretch out before Adam. A hopeless noise escapes the back of his throat. So much can still go wrong, and this is his last chance.  
“You all right there, kid?”  
  
Adam startles. A bald headed man in a flannel shirt is standing nearby. He looks a little ragged around the edges with tired lines on his face and sickliness to his complexion.  
  
“I’m okay,” Adam says, the lie sits heavy at the back of his throat. “Just trying to figure out where I’m going.”  
  
“I’m taking a load out to Topeka. You’re welcome to ride along if you want. If not you’ll need to find someplace to stay because there’s a storm rolling in.”  
  
Adam bites back a laugh. That’s the story of his life, really, trying to stay one step ahead of the storm. He considers the trucker for a minute. The guy doesn’t give off serial killer vibes. He just looks tired, old, and like Mr. Miller that used to live on Adam’s street and made sure to stand on the corner with an umbrella on rainy days when Adam and the other kids waited for the bus.  
  
It rankles Adam a bit, the unasked for concern. Where was this guy when Adam was getting his guts ripped out and eaten? Where was John Winchester when Adam could have used some concern and caring? Where were his brothers when Adam was left alone in the cage with two archangels?  
  
 _Topeka is in Kansas, though,_  he thinks. From there he can get to Lawrence and take care of two loose ends that don’t involve angels or demons, yet.  
  
“A ride sounds good, thanks.”  
  
The man holds out his hand.  
  
“Nathan Cooley.”  
  
“Adam Milligan.”  
  
They shake and Adam follows Nathan out to his rig.   
  
Nathan doesn’t talk much on the drive. It seems to tire him out from what Adam can tell. The interior of the cab smells like old takeout and something sharp and medicinal. The radio is on low in the background. Adam can pick out Queen and Bowie. Adam is fine with that. He closes his eyes and leans against the cool window.  
  
Sometime during the ride Adam actually falls asleep, lulled into a false security by the steady rumble of the engine and the chink-chink noise from the dorky looking charms hanging off the truck visor.  
  
Adam dreams.  
  
He dreams of walking through hills of grass hip high, hands fanned out, his palms tickled by the heavy heads swaying in the breeze.  He walks on as the grass gives way to ground soaked red.  Adam trips over his own body laid spread eagle, eye sockets open and empty, burned out.  He scrambles to his feet and backs away, trips over another body, still his.  
  
He is surrounded by a field of his own corpses.  
  
A hand shoots up and grabs his ankle.  Adam falls and another corpse turns over.  It latches onto him with too-strong fingers.  The others close in.  They open their mouths as one, and instead of words, out comes a terrible low screaming wind that sucks him in until he’s falling, falling into the cage and-  
  
Adam jolts awake and has a moment of panic that he’s trapped, but it’s just the seat belt.  
  
“Nightmare?” Nathan asks. Oncoming headlights illuminate the inside of the cab. It bounces off the charms, casting a web of shadows from the dream catcher, which did shit-all to live up to its name.  
  
“Yeah.” Adam scrubs at his face and sits up, wills his brain to full awake.  
  
“There’s some coffee in the thermos,” Nathan gestures to the floorboards.  
  
“Thanks.”  
  
The coffee is bitter despite the cream and sugar, more car battery acid-soaked gym socks than actual drink, but Adam sips on it anyway.  
  
“You don’t have to run forever, you know,” Nathan says. “You were talkin’ in your sleep. Whatever it is that has you all twisted up, you’re not going to find your answers in gas stations and hitching.”  
  
“I’m not looking for answers,” Adam says. His brain is still shaken from the dream, he shouldn’t be talking at all, but the words just come out because Nathan is the only person that’s shown this kind of concern in…Adam can’t remember and that is too depressing. “I already have those; I just have to fix things now.”  
  
“You sure it’s broken?”  
  
Adam huffs a borderline hysterical laugh.  
  
“More than you can imagine.”  
  
They both retreat into their own heads after that. Adam watches the darkness blur outside the windows. They’re in the flatlands now. He doesn’t know what state, but it probably doesn’t matter. It’ll be this way the entire drive to Kansas.  
  
Adam realizes that Nathan’s breathing has changed a couple hours later. He’s wheezing and beads of sweat litter his skin. Adam shakes off his unease and sits up.  
  
“Hey man, you okay?”  
  
Nathan’s knuckles go white on the steering wheel. His face contorts and he’s gasping, spasming.  
  
Nathan jerks the wheel and Adam only has a moment to realize the truck is careening off road. The truck hits the ditch and tips.  
  
The world dissolves into the screech of twisting metal and splintering glass.


	2. Second Chapter

_SHADOWLANDS:_  
 _They run and run and don’t stop until they do. Adam can’t say how far they’ve gone, but he doesn’t feel dead on his feet or exhausted._  
  
 _He feels just fine._  
  
 _He knows that’s a problem._  
  
 _They reach a cave hidden deep in the canyon that goes on forever. It’s just a crack in the wall, but the woman drags him inside and they come out in a cavern so large Adam is nothing more than an ant passing through the stalagmites._  
  
 _Light disappears the farther they go until they’re drowning in darkness. The woman keeps hold of Adam’s hand, helping him when he stumbles, guiding him through the maze they can’t see. Or maybe she can see it. Maybe her weird rabbit eyes have something to do with that._  
  
 _Then she comes to a stop and he hears the flick of a lighter. A spark catches something and she has a torch in her hand._  
  
“ _Well, didn’t expect them to get on our tails that fast, but it was good exercise, right?”_  
  
“ _What the hell?” Adam says. He has no other words to convey his thoughts on the entire situation._  
  
“ _Angels, actually,” the woman says. “Try to keep up, okay? I’ll tell you what I can before I send you off, so you might listen up. We don’t have time to do the traditional soul searching, touchy-feely, find yourself journey. Sucks for you, but I have a feeling you’ll pull through because you don’t have your head up your ass like certain other family members.”_  
  
 _The woman tilts the torch and it ignites a row of fires that travels around the cavern. If Adam felt dwarfed before it pales to how he feels when the light illuminates only a small portion of the cave around them. The fire disappears from sight down a long curve. The light doesn’t even reach the ceiling._  
  
“ _I’m dead, right? I remember dying.”_  
  
“ _See, keeping up already. That’s good. Yes, you are dead. Sort of. I snatched you just before you fully died, so there’s still the tiniest bit of spark left in your body, even though you’re not in it.”_  
  
“ _So I can go back?”_  
  
“ _There is no back, only forward.”_  
  
“ _Who are you, anyway?”_  
  
 _The woman grins a feral grin, something old and wild and pure. Adam shivers and shrinks from it and backs into a stalagmite._  
  
“ _My name is Rabbit,” she says. Her gaze slides past him and toward the curve of the fire. “You’re here because you’re part of something much bigger than yourself. If I hadn’t gotten you someone else would have.”_  
  
“ _Who would want me?” Adam asks._  
  
“ _See for yourself,” Rabbit says. “Follow the fire until you meet the old one. Be respectful.”_  
  
 _Rabbit was backing away from Adam, back into the shadows.  
  
"Remember, nothing is set."_  
  
 _Then the black swallows her up and he’s alone. Adam calls out, steps back to reach for her, but the darkness crowds toward him like a seething mass. Adam skitters back to the light, trembling in the warm glow as it keeps the dark back._  
  
 _Adam looks all around, but there’s nothing else save rock and fire and black. Adam follows the lighted path._  
  
 _The path curves without end, like it’s taking him in circles, except he never comes back to where he started. A spiral then, Adam thinks, as the stalagmites close together and form a wall on either side of the path. Adam knows some mythology. He hopes to God or whoever will listen that it’s not a minotaur waiting for him at the center. Adam doesn’t have any magic string. He doesn’t even have his wallet._  
  
 _How either of those would help him right now is not clear, but he feels a little more naked knowing he doesn’t even have useless crap in his pockets to McGuyver into a spark of hope or sanity._  
  
 _Adam’s footsteps echo around him, each crunch of sand and dirt, every breath he exhales. There’s a dripping somewhere in the cavern._  
 _A couple more minutes and he notices cave drawings on the walls around him._  
  
 _A coyote comes first, followed by pictures of a rock circle, a tree, and squiggle lines that crisscross and loop around each other. On the next section the coyote goes up against two men with spears. The next shows a coyote with a man and a black ash-like smudge that Adam would swear resembled a car, but there’s no way._  
  
 _Adam can’t begin to puzzle out what any of that means._  
  
 _The next curve brings Adam to a pool of water that stretches across his path. The water is clear and still, like a sheet of perfect glass, and reflects the flicker of the firelight against dark and he’d almost swear it became a yin yang._  
  
 _Adam approaches the edge. He can’t see the bottom to tell how deep it is, and there’s no way around it. The stalagmites are now so tall the tops disappear._  
  
 _Adam debates. Sighs. Fuck it. He has to go through, apparently._  
  
 _The water is freezing. Adam sticks close to the wall and feels his way along. Each step brings the water higher and higher. Then he takes a step and the bottom isn’t there._  
  
 _Adam goes under with a strangled cry. Water rushes into his mouth and nose. Adam can swim, he’s known how since he was seven, but this water is so heavy around him. It grabs hold and takes him down. Adam thrashes, eyes on the tantalizing surface where light glimmers. His lungs burn. His legs are lead._  
  
 _Adam goes down until the surface completely disappears and a horrifying thought enters his mind._  
  
 _He’s dead._  
  
 _He can still feel pain._  
  
 _If he doesn’t get to the surface the drowning will never stop._  
  
 _The world around him shifts again. He is still in the water, but not the pond in the cave. He’s in a murky brown river and his hands are tangled in the seaweed of a kelpie’s mane. He tries to pull away, but the mane grips him tighter._  
  
 _A flash. A flare._  
  
 _Hands grab him and pull him up. Adam coughs. John slaps his back and-_  
  
 _The vision fades and Adam is back in the cave. He fights. He twists and kicks, lashes out with his hands, fingers seeking purchase for anything as leverage._  
  
 _Something drifts by his hand. Adam grasps at it. It’s a strap. Backpack strap. He clings to it and tugs. It’s higher than he is. He uses it to pull himself up._  
  
 _Adam breaks the surface and coughs through his desperate gasps. The other side of the path is nearby and he kicks to shore, dragging himself onto the sand as he heaves the water he swallowed._  
  
 _Adam presses his forehead to the ground, doesn’t care the sand will cling and fall into his eyes. He breathes through fire, heart pounding against his ribs._  
  
 _When he can, he looks down at his hand. He’s still clutching the strap to a beat up backpack. Adam rolls onto his side, then sits up. He opens it._  
 _Inside is a tacky snow globe from Hell, Michigan and a collection of waterlogged postcards and letters bound with rubber bands. He can’t make out the words, but thinks one is signed Sam._  
  
 _The water in the pool begins to bubble and seep up the bank. Adam drops the letter and scrambles backwards. The bank around the backpack and letters crumbles, taking both back to the dark depths._  
  
 _Adam watches it for a moment, but when both items disappear the water calms again._  
  
 _Adam gets to his feet, casts a wary look at the water, and continues on._

 

_  
_

NOW:  
Ding. Ding. Ding.  
  
Adam groans.  
  
Ding. Ding. Ding.  
  
Adam reaches for the alarm clock, except his arms are too heavy and holy fuck he hurts.  
  
Adam blinks his eyes open. Something sticky and warm trickles down his face. Adam is on his side against his door. The cab is on its side. Nathan is dead. He’s dangling in his seat, the belt holding him in place, face slack. The dream catcher is swaying from side to side, so gentle, from the rear view mirror.  
  
It’s hard to breathe. For a moment Adam feels like he’s back in that pool with the water closing in over his head.  
  
He grits his teeth and scratches at the seatbelt until he unbuckles it. Adam drops and pain whites out his vision. When it clears up he crawls.  
  
The windshield is busted out. Glass glitters everywhere, the shards like broken teeth. Adam tumbles out and over the hood to the ground. The shards crunch and prick at him through his clothes.  
  
Adam’s arms shake as he crawls away from the wreck and he collapses ten feet away. His insides feel jumbled, jellified. The stars tilt and fall away. Cuts and bruises slowly knit themselves but he feels like shit inside and out.  
  
Thunder rumbles overhead and gets louder. Adam jolts when the thunder sound gives way to a rumbling engine.  
  
An engine rumble he knows.  
  
Shit. Shitshitshitshitshit.  
  
His body screams in agony but he pushes himself. Hand over hand, toehold by toehold. Wounds reopen on his belly and back. Blood clings thick at the back of his throat. A stand of trees is just a little farther away. He has a vague idea or stolen memory that he can hide in trees. He can crawl into them and stay out of sight.  
  
Car doors open. Close.   
  
Come on. Come on.  
  
Voices, low. Twist of metal, screech. Crunch of glass underfoot.  
  
The trees are closer now. Adam is breathing too hard, they’re gonna hear.  
  
Hand over hand. Lift, grip, pull.  
  
The rushing in his ears blots out all other noise. He can’t hear anything but his harsh breathing, his heart, the water closing in over his head.  
  
Hands land on his shoulders, his back. Adam panics and twists. His hand goes for the amulet and he thinks of Kansas, except he panics so all he imagines is corn and the Wizard of Oz.  
  
He hears a surprised yelp and the world rips around him. The extra weight goes with him and then there is sunshine blinding his eyes. Adam rolls over and comes face to face with Sam Winchester’s look of bitch-faced surprise.  
  
“Oh crap,” Adam says.

 

 

 

 

_SHADOWLANDS:_  
 _The paintings on the walls change. The coyote gives way to a hunchbacked figure and rows of plants. He’s pretty sure one picture is of a thunderbird all done in red, and then a gigantic tree at the end._  
  
 _Adam’s clothing squelches with each step. Sand cakes his feet and itches between his toes. He rounds another corner and stops dead._  
  
 _In the middle of the path is a large creature unlike anything Adam has ever seen. It’s gray and hairless, four legged, and has a large hump straining its battle scarred skin. The animal is bound to the sand with thick vines that seemed to have grown over it. The animal blinks at him, red rimmed eyes looking pained and angry._  
  
“ _Okay, this is really fucking unfair. I did not sign up for any of this,” Adam says. He wipes his already wet hands on his jeans and studies the obstacle before him. The creature is blocking the path. To get past it Adam will have to approach and climb over it._  
  
 _Suicidal, that plan is, Adam thinks in Yoda’s voice._  
  
 _And yet that is the only plan he can come up with._  
  
 _Adam approaches the creature slowly. If it gets out of those vines maybe Adam can lead it back to the pool, try to lead it in and drown it. Which means he’ll have to go into the water as well, and the weird heroic backpack of letters and postcards might not be as benevolent a second time._  
 _It doesn’t move, though, just watches him and takes in long rattling breaths._  
  
 _Adam is a couple inches from it. He reaches out and puts a hand on the creature’s shoulder._  
  
 _The images come in flashes._  
  
 _Adam is nine years old when John Winchester takes him to a baseball game. They eat hot dogs, get sunburned, and Adam rides in the front seat of the Impala._  
  
 _Adam is nineteen and the ghouls drag him to the crypt and eat him alive. They eat his mother, too._  
  
 _Adam is twenty and angels bring him back to life. He meets his brothers for the first time. They’re dicks. Zachariah comes to Adam in a dream, gives him a better option. Adam changes his mind when Sam and Dean come for him and Zachariah turns. Then the room shakes and Sam and Dean get out the door, but not Adam._  
  
 _Adam hears Michael’s voice._  
  
 _Adam is almost twenty-one and Michael grabs onto Sam. Sam pulls. They overbalance and their feet leave the ground. Adam and Michael are falling, falling._  
  
 _The cage isn’t steel bars. It’s not an enclosed box or a cave. It has no boundaries or fences or walls. It is simply absence; no color, sound, taste, or smell. Nothing to touch or to steady him. It is a blank spot in the universe adjacent to hell where nothing surrounds him, covers him, absorbs him._  
  
 _Adam is twenty-one and the nothing presses him thin, scrubs at him until pieces start blending in with the fabric of the void, one erasing stitch at a time._  
  
 _There is no life, no death, no time, no end._  
  
 _At least hell would be tangible, real. The cage is not, and in all the nightmares Adam ever had, none of them came close to the slow, inevitable erosion of his body, his soul, his perception of existence._  
  
 _To become nothing, to truly cease…_  
  
 _Hell would have been kinder._  
  
 _Michael leaves Adam in a rush of feathers and a scream of rage. Adam cannot move or think, he can hardly breathe._  
  
 _Adam stares out into the cage. Michael and Lucifer fight with each other, their rage and betrayal echoing and fading into the voice. He hears Sam screaming and it stretches on into years that become meaningless as Adam forgets the concept of the word. Then Sam isn’t screaming anymore and there is a palpable difference. The nothing must have taken Sam._  
  
 _Then, sometime later, the cage opens. Michael reclaims Adam and they fly out, straight into a blast of air pungent with the smells of the world. Adam reels from the abrasive elements on his skin. Lucifer leaves and Michael standing in the center of an ashen circle. Adam can’t catch all of Michael’s thoughts, but he feels raw hurt thrumming like exposed nerves. It’s different than what Michael felt while facing down Lucifer in Stull cemetery. He’s not angry with Lucifer anymore. He’s angry with God._  
  
 _Michael pushes Adam to the back of his head. It’s not as bad as the cage, but it’s disorienting. Adam is wrapped in cotton, surfacing only long enough to garner a snapshot._  
  
 _Deserted cities._  
  
 _Infected humans._  
  
 _Demons walking free._  
  
 _Scared survivors huddling in squalor._  
  
 _Michael keeps him down until one day he pulls Adam up and they are standing back in the circle at Stull cemetery._  
  
 _Adam is twenty-five, give or take, when Michael reunites the Horseman’s rings and does something to keep the door to the cage open. Adam watches in slow rolling horror as the nothing inside the cage seeps out into the world and eats it up, drawing everything into the yawning pit in a gust of wind that never stops howling._  
  
 _The void takes Adam as Michael rushes out of his body. Adam tumbles in after chunks of ground and trees and buildings. He keeps falling until he hits bottom once more. Everything hurts as the nothingness seeps into Adam once more, invisible teeth biting into his heart._  
  
 _Something dull gold glimmers next to Adam’s head. It’s a horned metal head hanging from a leather cord. He reaches out, grasps it. The horns cut into his hand. Adam clutches it close, closes his eyes._  
  
 _Adam is twenty-five-ish and he’s just been used to end the world._  
  
 _The next snapshots are quick and out of focus. Adam gets up. He walks through the nothing tearing the world apart. He can’t speak, but he thinks._  
  
 _I ended the world._  
  
 _I ended the world._  
  
 _The nothing eats at him, but he’s angry now._  
  
 _I ended the world._  
  
 _I ended the world._  
  
 _He begins to forget, but every time he does Adam closes his fist around the necklace until he draws blood. It helps for a while._  
  
 _I ended the world._  
  
 _I ended the world._  
  
 _Later there is a rip, a tiny tear in the fabric of the cage. It flutters slightly, a sighing breath. Adam finds it among the wreckage of a twisted black car._  
 _Adam is ageless and walks on all fours anymore instead of two. He can smell fresh air and dry dirt through the tear. He doesn’t remember what it means, but he wants it. Adam goes through the tear and comes out in a desert where mountains resemble giants and the sky is a churning mass of midnight stars and rosy dawn._  
  
 _The tangibility of the world scares him, angers him. He howls out long and loud. It’s not right, but he craves it. Wants to rip it apart with his teeth and hands that are more like paws now. He wants to feel bones breaking, feel blood gushing._  
  
 _He finds other things that look like him. They growl, teeth bared, hackles high. Adam snarls right back and charges, dropping the necklace in the sand. When the red haze lifts Adam is standing in a plain of blood-soaked carnage. The other creatures on the outskirts yip in fear and slink away from him. Adam heaves giant, rattling breaths. He licks his face, tastes blood, and it triggers hunger in his brain._  
  
 _Adam eats the field of dead until he is gorged._  
  
 _Adam forgets the necklace, forgets his name is Adam. He wanders the desert, sniffing out new enemies to eviscerate. He grows stronger, bigger, meaner._  
  
 _One day he is walking and comes upon a man-creature. It looks at him, surprise and apprehension on his face. The man-creature turns and light reflects off of something around his neck._  
  
 _He sees the necklace. Something clicks in his brain._  
  
 _Dean. Sam. Cage._  
  
 _I just ended the world._  
  
 _He charges, but plants erupt from the ground and tangle his legs. He hits the sand and they cover his body and up over his snout. He struggles against them, he has to kill the man-creature, kill the Dean._  
  
 _The Dean crouches in front of him, face confused, elated, full of awe._  
  
“ _You couldn’t let go. You kept holding on so tight you turned into this.”_  
  
 _Adam comes back to himself. He stumbles away from the creature- from_ himself- _and sinks to the sand. Adam buries his face in his hands and just shakes as the sheer amount of memories slot in next to his._  
  
 _When he looks up his creature-self is gone. Laying in the sand in its place is Dean’s necklace._  
  
 _Adam wants to throw up. He feels like he should, but he’s dead, he has no food in his stomach._  
  
 _When he feels up to moving, he goes to the necklace and picks it up with gentle fingers._  
  
 _No memories come rushing at him, but he feels a sickening dread overtake him._  
  
 _He pockets the necklace and starts walking with purpose._  
  
 _He’s going to find whatever is at the end of this damn maze and make noise until he gets some answers._

 

_  
_

_  
_NOW:  
“Stay the hell away from me.”  
  
Adam backs away from Sam, who keeps advancing. It’s weird that Adam forgets how tall his half brother is. He’s lived with him, fought him, for so many years, but each time they meet it hits him all over again.  
  
“What are you?”  
  
Sam’s nostrils flare like he’s scenting the air. A hysterical laugh bubbles up inside Adam. He keeps backing away.  
  
“Stay away. Just go back to Dean and do what you two do best and leave me alone.”  
  
Sam isn’t going for his weapons yet. That is definitely odd, but Adam will take whatever small favors he can at this point.  
  
“Tell me what you are. I’m not going to ask again.”  
  
“I’m not anything,” Adam yells.  
  
The sun is shining down, so Adam knows they’ve hopped time. When and where is the real question. He only hopes its not too far off the mark and that getting back on track won’t take more out of him than he can give.  
  
Sam makes an impatient noise and gestures with his hand. Adam freezes and can’t move again.  
  
Sam blots out the sun as he comes to stand directly in front of Adam. Then Sam leans in and  _sniffs_ , touches a finger to Adam’s forehead.  
  
“Adam,” Sam says. His face is blank, there’s no telling what Sam is thinking.  _How does he know?_  
  
“Go away.”  
  
Adam wills the thread to work against Sam, to compel him back to Dean. A pressure builds up in Adam’s chest like a thumb pressing down on his heart. Sam narrows his eyes. Adam pushes harder and harder.  
  
There’s a distinct pop somewhere in Adam’s head. Something warm trickles over his lips and chin.  
  
“Stop it,” Sam says. He puts his huge paw on the back of Adam’s neck and bends down to look Adam in the face. “Stop whatever you’re doing.”  
  
“Go back to Dean, God damn it, you gotta go. You’re ruining everything again.”  
  
“What are you talking about?”  
  
“Just let me fix this!”  
  
“All right, that’s enough of this.” Dean is there. Adam doesn’t know how he followed, but Dean is looking downright pissed and he grabs hold of Adam’s arm. “Sam, take us back.”  
  
They are moving before Adam can open his mouth through a rip, the rip that Adam made, and there wasn’t supposed to be a rip like that. Then they are in front of the Impala and it’s night. The world twists again and then they are at Singer Salvage.  
  
Adam pulls back, but he’s not strong enough to get away from both his brothers. And Adam’s own body doesn’t want to obey him. This isn’t right.  Sam and Dean should not be able to do these things, to use power with ease and move through time rips and  _nothing is making any sense_ , because all of this is not following the intended programming.  
  
They take him inside. Bobby gives him a stink eye as he passes. His brothers fold Adam onto the couch and Sam…does something. He makes several gestures with his hands and the energy in the air changes.   
  
Adam looks up at him.  
  
“You’re not human anymore?”  
  
“No, neither are you, by the looks of it,” Dean says, face thunderous. “So why you start off this little sharing and caring session by telling us what exactly you’re trying to do. Because you’re in a hell of a mess, kid.”  
  
Adam laughs. Not funny-ha-ha, but full on hysterical take-me-to-the-loony-bin-hiccuping-sobs. Hell of a mess, that’s one way to describe it.  
  
Dean draws away from him, sends an incredulous look over to Bobby.  
  
“Okay, so we’re cuckoo for coco puffs, that’s just awesome.”  
  
Adam laughs even harder because that is just Dean, every Dean he’s ever grown to love or admire or hate or want to strangle in his sleep.  
  
The many Dean’s he’s known flash through his mind, the ones that bandaged his scraped knees and punched him hard enough to knock out teeth. The ones that rescued Sam from the cage and left Adam to fade away. The ones that put a gun in his hand only to take it from his cold fingers later.  
  
None of this is right, but things still haven’t changed at all.  The Winchesters are always the same make and model, following different roads to the same God awful conclusion, Thelma and Louise-ing their way through the Apocalypse and on into the void.  
  
Adam has failed.

 

 

 

 


	3. Third Chapter

_THEN:_  
 _Adam sucks on a cigarette and knocks his heels together as he sits on the makeshift bench Dean cobbled together out of scrap from the junkyard. Dean whistles, feet sticking out from under the dinged up frame of a Chevrolet Mercury.  Sam is…elsewhere. The library, probably. He’s in that perpetual teenage angst phase where he tries to ignore the source of all his frustrations, i.e. all his familial relations.  Again._  
  
 _It’s 1954 this time. There is no hunting, no ghosts or demons or angels dropping in from above. They are still there, but John never saw Mary die on the ceiling. Mary disappeared, John turned to drink, that world’s Adam happened on a weekend bender. His Mom still died by ghoul, and Adam can’t untangle the logic behind that one._  
  
“ _You’re thinking too loud again, cracker jack.” Dean slides out from under the car. He wiggles a wrench in Adam’s direction. “You know what that shit leads to. One grumpy sourpuss in this family is enough.”_  
  
 _He’s not talking about John. John hasn’t been in the picture since a year after Adam showed up on his doorstep with wild eyes and nothing but the clothes on his back. John’s car crash brought Dean low and made Sam unpredictable, but Dean pulled himself up and went to work as a resident mechanic. Sam, though…_  
  
“ _I’m not a sourpuss.” Adam tosses a grease rag at Dean. Dean catches it before it hits his face, the bastard._  
  
“ _I sure don’t see a smile yet.” Dean tosses it back. It hits Adam’s cheek. “Now what’s got your whitey tighties in a twist?”_  
  
 _Adam takes another drag, feels the smoke settle in his lungs._  
  
“ _Hypothetically-”_  
  
“ _Oh Jesus, you need to stop spending time with Sam-”_  
  
“ _Hypothetically, say you know something is going to happen by a certain sequence of events and you try to change the outcome, only every time you try you end up at the same place. Hypothetically, say you get multiple chances to change this sequence, but each time it only brings you to the same conclusion no matter how many times you try to stop it. What would you do?”_  
  
 _Dean rolls his eyes and rummages around in his toolbox._  
  
“ _I am cutting you off from that science fiction crap you like to read,” he mutters, but Adam can tell he’s thinking because Dean screws up his face a certain way. He finds what he’s looking for and flips the wrench up the air, catching it by its handle. “Seems to me the entire problem is your perception of the problem, kiddo.”_  
  
 _Dean strides over, flicks Adam’s nose, and then steals his half-smoked cigarette. Dean takes a drag, something he’s never done in any other life Adam has yet seen._  
  
“ _If the sequence is the problem then change your approach. Throw out the rules, stop trying the same old shit if it obviously isn’t working.”_  
 _Dean ruffles Adam’s hair. Adam lets out an indignant squawk and hops off the bench. He takes out his comb to re-direct his gelled up hair; some cliches just couldn’t be helped because_ of course _the Winchesters were greasers._  
  
 _No one gets his John Travolta jokes, of course. Dean and Sam are nice enough to just think he has a weird sense of humor that misses the mark._  
  
“ _Also, if all this is just a roundabout way of asking me about girl problems I am very proud. Just be cool, be smooth, and do not knock this chick up, because that is not an inevitable ending right there, kiddo. That’s just poor planning.”_  
  
“ _You’re a jerk.” Adam rolls his eyes and walks for the garage door._  
  
“ _You need some date money? The drive-in has a cool monster flick tonight,” Dean calls._  
  
 _Adam flips him off over his shoulder, but he’s thinking about Dean’s advice._  
  
 _Change the approach._  
  
 _Well, nothing else has worked so far. And Dean, for all his outward appearance and opinions of himself, is a smart guy until Sam dies._  
  
 _Adam does take the date money later, but he heads to the run down bookstore across town. Sam hasn’t found this haunt yet, being too caught up in the library and Jessica the librarian, but Adam’s had it on his radar since he got into town._  
  
 _Singer’s Shop carries dusty old tomes from all corners of the world and is a pit stop for folk of all kinds of shady repute. The man himself, middle aged, pudgy, and hat clad, raises an eyebrow when Adam comes in._  
  
“ _Boy, that ruckus last week better not have had anything to do with you.”_  
  
“ _That ruckus last week was not me,” Adam says dutifully._  
  
 _Spirits are easy enough for him after all his practice, even without backup. Dean thought Adam had a girl, Sam was too into Jessica to care, and sometimes killing something supernatural was the only satisfaction he could get while his brothers lived ordinary lives._  
  
 _Funny how things turned out when the world went topsy-turvy._  
  
“ _You’re gonna get yourself killed one of these days.”_  
  
 _Bobby had thrown Adam out of the shop the first few times he tried to buy something. It took hunting down a raw-head and depositing it on the back step for Bobby to let him in and start sharing his knowledge. Adam may have also threatened to keep on even without Bobby’s help, but low tactic or not it had worked._  
  
“ _I need to start looking at books on spells,” Adam says._  
  
 _Bobby regards him. “You wanna be more specific, because I’ve got a shit ton that fit that criteria.”_  
  
“ _I’ll know it when I see it,” Adam says with a shrug._  
  
 _Bobby rolls his eyes. “Back room, west side. Anything sealed needs to stay that way, understand?”_  
  
“ _Aye-aye.” Adam throws him a salute._  
  
“ _Damn fool idgit.”_  
  
 _Adam spends half the night in the back room flipping through books on witchcraft, spells, and magical objects. He finds what he needs near midnight and almost brains himself on a shelf in his excitement._  
  
 _Tucked away in a small journal nearly two hundred years old, Adam reads a passage about re-weaving fate by way of using one’s own soul threads._  
  
 _He buys the book and goes home feeling twenty feet tall with hope hanging near and sweet over his head._  
  
 _Dean smirks when he walks in._  
  
“ _Hope you used a condom,” he calls._  
  
 _Sam rolls his eyes. “Geez, could you be any more crude?”_  
  
 _Adam can’t speak at all. The words are gummed up in his throat and chasing each other in circles because he can_ fix _this, he can fix_ everything _._  
“ _I love you guys,” Adam croaks. He hugs a disgruntled Sam and a smug Dean and heads off to his room._  
  
“ _Maybe you should take a leaf from the kid’s book and finally get past first base with your honey,” Dean says. “Seems to work magic.”_  
  
 _Adam closes his door on Sam’s heated reply. Adam hides the book with the other few he’s been able to afford beneath the floorboards in his closet. Tomorrow he’ll start gathering supplies._

 

_  
_

_  
_NOW:  
Adam calms down. Eventually. After a round of holy water, silver knife cuts, and a weird test where Sam has him inhale the smoke from a burning sage bundle. The only thing that accomplishes is clearing his nasal passages and quenching his thirst.  
  
“He’s not quite real,” Sam says. His head is cocked to the side, eyes distant. He stares at Adam like he sees right through him, down to the fraying threads of his soul. “He’s alive, but he’s not…right.”  
  
“You’re one to talk,” Adam says. He remembers Sam in the cage, in Germany, after Little Bighorn. No one is real or right after that.  
  
“So what are you if you’re not a real boy?” Dean stands close enough to be considered hovering, with his arms crossed over his chest, a veritable wall of pissy disapproval.  
  
Adam’s accidental teleportation has tripped the Big Brother wire. He can’t decide if he wants to laugh again or get angry.  
  
“I’m not anything,” Adam says. “I’m trying to fix things and you two are still getting in the way.”  
  
“Yeah, you said that before,” says Sam.  
  
“Because it’s true. You two are idiots on the highest levels on  _every_ level. I swear, it’s like you shouldn’t have even survived this long but you’ve got cockroach genes and you keep scuttling around even when people cut your heads off, complete with the spinning in circles and bumping into walls.”  
  
“Well, he’s got you two pegged,” Bobby drawls. Dean rolls his eyes.  
  
“I can’t get a read on him at all,” Sam continues, still doing the staring thing. “He feels slippery, like he’s coated in oil. There’s a few images but they don’t make any sense.”  
  
“So he’s got some mojo on him. We strip it away,” Dean says.  
  
Sam opens his mouth to say something back, but he jolts and both he and Dean turn in sync towards the door like puppets. It’s the creepiest thing Adam has seen since that world where John ended up in a sexual relationship with Crowley.  
  
“The kid is right, it’s a miracle you’ve both survived this long.” A blond-haired woman in jeans and a Queen t-shirt is standing there. Adam shrinks away, because she overwhelmingly radiates the energy of the Shadowlands. Adam can almost taste the sand and air.  His heart lurches.  
  
“Fred,” Sam says, smiling.  
  
Dean raises an eyebrow and considers her.  
  
Adam tries to breathe through the surging panic attack closing his airways.  
  
“Sam, Dean, Mr. Singer,” the woman nods at everyone and then focuses on Adam. “And Adam. You’ve been kicking up some dust.”  
  
Adam raises a shaky hand and flips her off.  
  
She almost looks amused.  
  
“You know anything about this?” Dean thumbs over his shoulder at Adam.  
  
“A little, but mostly that being as he’s ya’ll’s younger brother he falls into the category of your problem. So, happy reunion and all that. I suggest you take this show on the road, though, because there’s some pretty high powers out looking for him besides me.”  
  
“Brother?” Dean whips around.  
  
Sam gives him a nod. Part of Dean’s expression closes.  
  
“What higher powers?” asks Sam.  
  
“Angels. Demons. Other gods. Anything with a supernatural bent, because he’s leaving a tantalizing trail.”  
  
Fred tosses Sam something. He catches it. It’s a cell phone.  
  
“Taz demands you use that to keep in touch. She got it from some witch-hacker she banged out in Rio. Untraceable, secure channel. I’ll ward Mr. Singer’s residence so he’s not caught in the crossfire.”  
  
“What’s Adam caught up in?” Sam asks.  
  
Fred catches Adam’s eyes. He feels something transpire between them. A twist, a pull, some kind of release.  
  
“The same thing we were made for,” she says. “Get going.”  
  
Sam is on his feet and moving to Adam, while Dean just raises an eyebrow.  
  
“We’re seriously packing shit and leaving on her say so?”  
  
“You’ll need to go to your tree, Dean,” Fred says.  That gets Dean’s full attention.. “Your connection is so strong there that nothin’ will be able to touch you, not even angels. It’s the safest place while you get all the facts from littlest brother, there.” Fred turns to Bobby. “Mr. Singer, I hear you have a wonderful panic room. I’ve got a couple new wards I can put in place for you.”  
  
Bobby looks to the Winchesters. Sam nods. Dean considers Sam, then nods as well.  
  
“Right this way,” says Bobby.  
  
Then Sam and Dean turn to Adam.  
  
It’s only fractionally less scary than staring down his chupacabra-self had been.  
  
Sam manhandles Adam into the Impala. Adam closes his eyes as the scent of leather and oil cloud his senses. He’s aware of Sam buckling him in and his brothers getting in the car.  
  
Adam is busy with the flashes in his head.  
  
John giving him a half-quirked smile on the way home from the ball game.  
  
John yelling as an Adam bleeds out onto the front seat, ghoul bites too deep and many to stitch up.  
  
Sam and Ruby in the backseat.  
  
Dean and Anna in the backseat.  
  
Adam splayed out on the trunk, gun loose in his hands, Lucifer-wearing-Sam standing over him, fist raised.  
  
Adam brushing past the twisted shell of a once awesome car, metal cutting his shoulder, as he pushed his way toward a rip in the fabric of the universe.  
  
“Hey, look alive back there, asshole. You still need to start talking,” Dean says from the front seat as the Impala roars to life.  
  
“You’re never going to believe me,” Adam says.  
  
“Try us.”

 

 

 

 

_SHADOWLANDS:_  
 _The fire sputters out as Adam makes a final turn and comes to the center of the spiral. The world is dark for a moment, and then his eyes adjust to a soft glow of a million blue hanging lights._  
  
 _No, not lights._  
  
 _Adam stares up in awe. He would almost call them fireflies, except they aren’t bugs. They are the tiniest of blue spheres just hanging in the air like frozen rain. They sway and drift on a breeze Adam can’t feel, and they go up and up, far into the ceiling of the cave and disappear from his sight._  
  
 _Adam steps forward into the fray. The spheres grow in size as he gets closer. He reaches one on the outskirts and peers in close. The sphere becomes a contained galaxy of stars and planets and soft, sparkly cloud dust._  
  
 _Adam wades into them, at first dodging around them, until he gets too close and simply passes through._  
  
 _The light grows stronger as he goes on, until all the little spheres, the millions of universes, appear to be connected by strings of lights, turning the cave into a large spiderweb of lighted worlds._  
  
“ _Hello, Adam.”_  
  
 _Adam startles. The darkness parts and an old woman steps out into the light. She’s got wrinkles on top of wrinkles and long hair hanging in a braid that would make Rapunzel green with envy. The lights and worlds cover her like a gown and drift with her movements, more like they are an extension of her skin._  
  
“ _Hi,” he says._  
  
“ _You’ve made quite a journey to get here. Several times,” she says. “This is the first time you got all the way.”_  
  
 _The woman waves her hand to the side. For a moment the shadows dance across the sand and part the veil. He sees the shapes of several bodies dressed like him littering an expanse of desert while vultures and other carrion kind move in.  
  
Creepy doesn't begin to cover it._  
  
“ _Why am I here?”_  
  
“ _That’s something you need to ask yourself, you’re the one that insists on seeing it through to the end.”_  
  
“ _Where are we?”_  
  
 _The woman smiles._  
  
“ _This is the beginning and ending and rebirth of everything.”_  
  
 _A sudden sense of smallness sweeps over Adam. He feels like a speck of dust surrounded by the glory of a mountain, helpless to overcome it._  
 _The old woman reaches out and takes him by the hand. She leads him deeper into the web where the dark becomes a tangible thing between the strings of light and glowing worlds. It tugs at Adam’s clothing, brushes his skin, in a way that doesn’t happen when he passes through worlds. He is a ghost to everything but the dark._  
  
 _They come to stop at the base of a tree. The trunk is old and gnarled, twisting up and out of sight, while some of the lower branches hang down heavy from supporting the worlds._  
  
 _The enormity of what this place is, what it means, is too big for Adam to comprehend. He turns his eyes downward and away._  
  
 _The woman reaches out and touches the trunk with her hand._  
  
“ _You have come here seeking answers, Adam. Should you still want them, now is the time to ask.”_  
  
 _The woman is not talking about herself. Adam wants to run away, to find his way to Rabbit and tell her to take him home. He wants to curl up in a corner and shut the world away._  
  
 _Adam bites his lip hard enough to bleed. He reaches out with tentative fingers toward the tree and presses his palm flat against it._  
  
 _At first there is nothing._  
  
 _And then there is_ everything.

 

 

 

 

 

NOW:  
The Impala twists out of Singer Salvage and arrives at closed gates on a dirt road. There is a Native American man in jeans and a button down shirt leaning against the fence post. He lifts his hand in greeting and opens the gate. The Impala rolls forward.  
  
“Missouri said to expect you today,” the man says. “The tree is a couple miles in, just keep to the road and then make a left when you see the ruins.”  
  
“Missouri?” Dean says.  
  
“A friend of John,” the man says. “No one will disturb you here, Mochni. It’s good to have you back, and we welcome your brothers Chankoowashtay and Ata’halne.”  
  
“Chan what?” Dean asks intelligently.  
  
“Those are the names we know them by. Chankoowashtay, the good road,” the man gestures to Sam. “And Ata’halne, he who interrupts. Your stories have been passed down for generations, starting with my great-great grandfather the medicine man, Hania.”  
  
Dean startles. His throat works like words are stumbling around inside trying to get out. In the end he extends his hand. The man takes it.  
  
“It’s an honor to meet you,” Dean says, more serious than Adam has ever heard.  
  
“The honor is mine. Go ahead, there’s a place prepared for you.”  
  
The man waves them on. Dean hesitates a moment and then the Impala rolls forward. Adam chances a glance back at the gate. The man is there for a moment, and then he isn’t.  
  
The road is winding and takes them deeper into the scrub brush and hills. None of them talk, but the tension is tangible. Adam makes fists of his hands and wraps his arms around his middle. He ignores the way he shakes.  
  
A couple miles farther and the ruins of a pueblo village appear. Dean takes the road branching out on the left. The ruins then rise around them, rows of broken and crumbling homes fanning out around the newer road winding between them all.  
  
The tree appears around another bend in the middle of the road. The tree isn’t overly magnificent in size or shape, but it has a distinct presence that Adam finds amazing. The trunk twists up from the earth and branches sprout off in every direction, giving the tree a wide canopy of green leaves and small berries. The roots twist over one another and plunge into the cracked earth like they are cradling something beneath.  
  
Dean shuts off the engine and gets out of the car. Sam follows. Adam hesitates, but he feels a tug of impatient energy from both of them. Adam joins his brothers a couple steps behind.  
  
Dean stops in front of the tree. Adam can’t see his face, but his shoulders are stiff and Adam doesn’t dare breathe too much. Sam is off to the side, face blank, waiting.  
  
Dean reaches toward the tree, much like Adam once did, and presses his palm to the trunk, head bowed.  
  
When he steps back there’s a strange look on his face before Dean buries it. Then Dean is looking at Adam  
  
“Come on,” Dean says.  
  
A walk around the tree reveals a small cabin. Three beds are made up inside. There is a mini fridge and a small shower hooked up to some outside solar panels. The fridge is filled with food and beer.  
  
They get comfortable. At least, Sam and Dean get comfortable. Adam sits down as far away as they will permit and feels like he’s facing down a firing squad.  
  
“All right,” Dean says. “Talk.”


	4. Fourth Chapter

NOW:

“There is a cave in the Shadowlands and inside it is a tree at the center of a spiral maze. The Celts call it the World Tree, the Norse call it Yggdrasil, but it’s all the same thing. It’s the source that holds every world and parallel universe in place and keeps them alive, and it’s where all of them began.”  
  
Adam closes his eyes for a moment. The truth is a shaky thing, burning in his throat, threatening to ignite him from the inside out.  
  
The last time he got this close to laying everything out he was standing in Stull trying to talk directly to Michael and Lucifer in the one world he was too late to prevent Dean or Sam from saying yes.  
  
That world went up in a white hot flash of grace clashing with grace and Adam burned alive while tied to a tree.  
  
He can never think of Salem or witch trials with anything less than acute horror.  
  
“I’m not the Adam from this world. Well, I suppose I am now, I’ll get to that later. In my world I was killed by two ghouls looking to get revenge on John Winchester.”  
  
“Why would they go after you for that?” Dean sits across from Adam and watches him straight on. He’s too still, too calm.  
  
“Because I’m his son, too.”  
  
Adam braces himself. Moments pass. Nothing happens, no angry yelling, no denials. He glances up at his brothers. Dean is frowning, but he’s still calm. Sam already knows this and accepts it, apparently, and isn't that just a kick in the balls after everything. Adam licks his lips and continues.  
  
“Long story short, I happened. John was in town to take care of a ghoul, got hurt, met Mom, then he left. He can back when I was fifteen, came around a couple times after that. Then the children of the ghoul he killed came after me and Mom. They ate us. Then I woke up in the Shadowlands.”  
  
Adam gives a quick rundown of the events that happened inside the spiral. With each word he forces himself to look past his brothers, to go numb. He notes their surprise in a distant way.  
  
“What happened when you touched the tree?” Sam asks.  
  
Adam feels himself smile. It’s an ugly one.  
  
“Every life I’ve ever led in every universe came rushing into my head. I got to see my failures play out over and over and over again. The running theme is that being half a Winchester is detrimental to my health and that you two keep making the same mistakes for each other and it always ends with me ending the world.” Adam pins Sam with a glower. “You go on and on about how awful your destiny is, but it’s never you that goes through with the shitty parts.”  
  
“Okay, simmer down,” says Dean.  
  
“And you,” Adam feels his rage bubble up before he can stop himself. “You pick the single worst thing to do whenever Sam kicks the bucket. You can’t just grieve like a normal person or-or get your head out of your ass long enough to just say what you really mean.”  
  
“If I wanna sign up for counseling, I’ll get it from a professional, not a snot nosed kid with loose screws,” growls Dean.  
  
“Enough,” Sam says. He puts power behind his words and they reverberate around the cabin. “Adam, what happened next?”  
  
Adam curls back into himself.  
  
“The woman asked me if I got what I needed. I couldn’t even talk because all that shit shoved into my head and there wasn’t enough room, but it couldn’t go anywhere else. Then the cave began to shake. The woman pushed me away, told me to hide. I bumped into one of the worlds and got sucked into it. I came out in my bedroom, only it wasn’t mine, it belonged to the Adam of that world and I had just taken over his body.”  
  
Silence. When neither brother move to shoot him he continues.  
  
“I thought I had a second chance there, but the ghouls came again that night. I managed to get away, but they took Mom. They kept searching for me so I ran off and hid. Lo and behold, two days later you guys came rolling into town. The ghoul-Adam had called you looking for John. I tried to intervene and you ended up shooting both of us.”  
  
A bullet through the head had been quick, at least.  
  
“I ended up back in the cave. It felt like the entire mountain was trying to come down. I ran into another world and woke up just as the ghouls were eating me, only in that world John came bursting in. Mom was already gone, but he dragged me out of there. I bled out in the car on the way to the hospital. When I ended up in the cave again there was light and screaming everywhere. I hopped into another world, another Adam, about two weeks before the ghouls came. I spent that time sorting through the information the tree gave me. That’s when I figured out what I needed to do.”  
  
That world, with that Adam, would always be the hardest time out of everything. He tried to tell his Mom what was going on, he tried to be honest, just like she always taught him.  
  
She took him to see a psychiatrist who put him away in a mental facility. The ghouls got Mom while Adam was strapped to a hospital bed fighting the sedatives pumping into his veins.  
  
“And what was that?” Dean asks, bringing Adam to the present.  
  
“I’m nothing but a ghost, a spirit, so I’m basically possessing the Adam I’m wearing, only I push that spirit out of the body once I’m inside. Every Adam I possess dies as soon as I take over, because there can only be one of us here at a time. It’s not natural and it’s not supposed to work that way.”  
  
That should seal the deal on his fate in the world, but neither brother is moving for a weapon yet.  
  
“That’s not the whole truth, though,” Sam says. “You’re trying to convince us you’re something to be hunted. Why?”  
  
 _Because I am.  Because I end the world, every world._  
  
There is not enough air in the cabin. Which is bullshit, of course there’s plenty, but Adam’s lungs don’t believe that. Adam’s breaths grow short and desperate. He eyes the door.  
  
Adam never sees Sam move, but he’s there and puts his massive paw on the back of Adam’s neck.  
  
Sam is trying to pry into his head. Adam snarls and turns toward him. He doesn’t think about it, doesn’t know how he does it, but he opens his head and blasts his memories at Sam. They are all there, the short lived triumphs, the long lasting defeats, every death and resurrection. Every time Adam joined the family trying to redirect their destinies from the best seat in the house only to fail and fall into nothingness and emerge as the twisted, distorted, monster made of rage and despair and ashen guilt.  
  
Sam stumbles back, face clouded.  
  
“You two fuck up everything you touch, me most of all. Why can’t you just let me fix this?”  
  
He’s crying. He feels the wetness on his face, how his lip trembles. Air comes in short burst, his chest heaves, searches, seeks. His vision blurs out. He closes his eyes, his knees go weak. Adam sinks to the cabin floor and hangs his head.  
  
“You’re unraveling yourself.” It’s Sam who says this, his voice subdued. “You’re using your soul to change our fates.”  
  
“He’s what?” says Dean.  
  
“The soul, it’s a powerful source of energy. He’s figured out how to take his apart. He’s been using pieces of them to change history, to influence people so they make different choices. That’s why we kept ending up in Kansas last week.”  
  
“That was you?” Dean demands, angry.  
  
Adam looks up at Dean.  
  
“You told me to change my tactics. They were  _working_.”  
  
“Adam, you’re  _erasing yourself_ ,” Sam stresses.  
  
Adam meets Sam’s hard gaze head on.  
  
“I know,” he says.  
  
A cloud of emotions pass over Sam’s face until he stops on genuinely appalled and sort of sick.  
  
“All right, we’re taking a time out now. You,” Dean points at Adam. “You’re going to stay right where you are. No more unraveling or erasing or whatever you’re doing. Sam, why don’t you go call Fred and get a feel for what’s going on?”  
  
Sam doesn’t look like he wants to leave, but Dean pokes him until he stands up and goes out.  
  
Adam pulls himself back up on the bed and brings his knees to his chest. Dean says nothing for the longest time. He sighs, runs his hand through his hair.  
  
“Honestly, even if Sam wasn’t a walking talking lie detector, the amount of trouble you’ve caused would be enough to convince me you’re a Winchester.”  
  
“Fuck you,” says Adam.  
  
Dean snorts. “Yeah, the resemblance is definitely there.”  
  
Dean gets up and his and Sam’s bags appear on the bed. He fishes out a water bottle and tosses it to Adam. It hits the bed, bounces. Adam regards it for a minute, but he picks it up. His throat is raw, anyway.  
  
Dean sticks his head out the cabin door.  
  
“Yo bitch, how about we get some pie in this joint?”  
  
Sam doesn’t answer, but a moment later there is a faint pop and a steaming apple pie appears on the bed. The dough is shaped like a hand, middle finger extended.  
  
“Boy is talented,” Dean says with no little pride while Adam just stares.  
  
“What are you guys?”  
  
“Demigods so far as we can tell.” Dean says, nonchalant.  He sticks a fork in the pie and gives it to Adam.  
  
Adam takes a hesitant bite. Crisp apple like an orchard in fall bursts in his mouth.  
  
Dean talks while Adam eats. He tells Adam about Coyote and Kokopelli, about the Shadowlands and lost time and about Fred and Taz and the others like them.  
  
“So it looks like you’re not the only trying to change the fates.”  
  
“It was working.”  
  
“Yeah, you’ve said that. Seems to me, though, that you’ve been going about this all wrong.”  
  
“Gee, I never would have guessed after failing in every fucking life I’ve ever lived.”  
  
“Shut up and listen, half pint. Look, how many times did you actually explain this to me and Sam? The other me’s and Sam’s. Fuck, no wonder your head’s screwed up. But how many times?”  
  
“No one ever believed me.”  
  
“How many times?”  
  
Adam pokes at the pie.  
  
“Twice,” he admits. “Got burned alive the first time. Second time I… Second time I got put in Bobby’s panic room. Michael and Lucifer got to you both. Bobby died. No one came back for me.”  
  
There was a bucket of water and a bed. The water lasted fifteen days.   
  
Adam lasted nineteen.  
  
Dean inhales sharply.  
  
“Yeah, I guess that would make it hard to tell us again.”  
  
“You think?”  
  
Dean says nothing. Adam eats some more pie.  
  
“When I was seven Dad left us with a babysitter while he went on a job,” Dean says after a couple minutes. “The lady was pretty cool. She made cookies and lemonade and let us watch cartoons. Never yelled at Sam for cryin’ like some of the other sitters did. She went out to get talk to a neighbor and Sam wanted some more lemonade, but we’d already finished the pitcher. So I tried to make some more for him. The first batch tasted like ass, Sam almost puked on me. So I threw it out and made another. By the time the sitter came back inside, Sam had given up and the kitchen was a mess. I was ready to bawl my eyes out.  
  
“The sitter helped me clean everything up. She told me, you know, about how sometimes life gives you lemons so you make lemonade. But if you can’t get your lemonade to taste right there’s no shame in asking someone else to help, because sometimes it takes a couple tries to get it just right.”  
  
Adam finds it hard to swallow past the rising lump in his throat.  
  
“I’m sorry we didn’t believe you before,” Dean goes on. Adam makes a mental note to remember those rare words. “And I get that it's kind of late for apologies, but let us help you now. In a way that doesn’t kill you permanently forever.”  
  
"I can't fail, Dean," Adam says.  His voice is small.  "I can't become that thing again.  You don't-you don't understand what that's like.  I can't get left behind in that place again."  
  
"We're not going to let you."  Dean looks right in Adam's eyes and Adam can't look away, not when Dean turns his full attention on him.  
  
It's moments like these that Adam understands how Sam feels, because every bit of Dean is focused on him, listening, present.  It makes Adam feel important, valued.  No matter that Adam always begins an only child, he's had many lives where Dean has taken him under his wing and given him that attention.  This time it's different, it's stronger.  And Adam is so damn weak and tired and fucking  _lonely_.  
  
Dean holds out his hand, a simple invitation.  
  
Adam has shaken Dean’s hand many times, whether it be in grudging greeting, suspicion, easy acceptance, or on someone’s deathbed.  
  
Never has it been in a promise.  
  
Adam stares at it.  Dean doesn’t withdraw.  The moments tick by one after another.  
  
Adam has a plan, he's got a direction that is taking him to his inevitable conclusion.  It's working and yet-  
  
And yet.  Dean always pulls something out of his hat.  He always tries to keep his promises.  
  
Adam breathes in. Breathes out.  
  
Dean's hand does not waver.  He doesn't stop looking at Adam with that look, the big brother look, even though Adam threatened Sam not too long ago, even though Adam just laid out this crazy, impossible story, even though Dean should be angry with John and the world and unwilling to take on the burden of John's mistake.  
  
"Why?" Adam asks.  
  
"You're family," Dean says like it's the simplest, most obvious thing in the world.  
  
Adam hesitates, but then he grasps Dean’s steady hand with his shaky one.  
  
Dean tightens his grip. Something warm passes between them. Adam can’t put words to it, but the tight band around his chest eases.  
  
Dean’s lips quirk up in a half smile.  He shakes Adam’s hand once and lets it go.  
  
“Eat your pie, kiddo.”

 

 

 

 

_THEN:_  
 _The day Adam cuts out his soul is a deceptively sunny Monday. He is kneeling on a plain of waving grass in Montana between bodies of cavalry soldiers, knees slick with blood, hands surprisingly steady as they hold the chupacabra blade Dean gifted Adam not two weeks before ("You're a man now," Dean said, even though Adam had already killed billions.  Dean, with hair in long braids over his cavalry uniform, looks proud when Adam takes the killing tool made to stop anything the elders know of so far)._  
  
 _Sam stares up at Adam, eyes clouded over, the knife that killed him laying nearby. Betrayal by a fellow soldier, because Sam dressed in buckskin with feathers in his hair and never hid the Native in his blood even though he fought with the cavalry with Dean, with Adam, with countless other scouts._  
  
 _The event changes faces and players and reasons, but it always happens in the back._  
  
 _Dean is on his horse, galloping away to the nearest crossroads as fast as his lathered black pony can run.  Adam doesn’t know when Dean will get there._  
  
 _The cuts burn like acid as Adam carves the symbols into his chest. He pushes the blade in over and over, up and down, around, retracing them until his healing grinds to a halt and he is as red as the surrounding countryside._  
  
 _Adam keeps his eyes on Sam the entire time. The book was very specific about the process: d_ _o not falter in your desire._  
  
 _Flies buzz over Sam’s corpse, rising and falling, crawling into his mouth and over his eyes._  
  
 _Adam hates Sam and Dean. He hates seeing them rise and fall for each other, hates how they lay down everything they are when push comes to shove and the other is in the crosshairs. He hates the blinders they have from birth and how they stand back to back or nose to nose and ignore the rest of the world screaming as it burns and the ashes and sparks land on their shoulders._  
  
 _Adam hates their entire bloodline and the curse of love it carries in it, because he hates Sam and Dean as much as he loves them because they make room in their lives when Adam shows up, however reluctantly, and they love him, too, just not as much as they love each other._  
  
 _His soul comes apart with a twist and a tug and the barest of sighs that bleed over the breeze._  
  
 _Adam’s soul is as thin as gossamer and feels like spun sugar. He cradles it in his bloody hands and stares at it with a distant kind of awe._  
  
 _It’s so small for something seemingly important, and in the light of the day it almost disappears from sight._  
  
 _Adam takes the knife and nicks a corner of it. He braces himself, but there is no pain, not even the slightest pinprick._  
  
 _Adam takes a thread and pulls it loose. He places it over Sam’s chest and presses his hand to it._  
  
 _Sam Winchester takes a gasping breath and coughs flies out of his mouth. He blinks his eyes until they clear, chest heaving, spittle thick on his chin. He grasps Adam’s hand and tries to speak, tugging at Adam._  
  
“ _It’s okay, just breathe-”_  
  
 _Adam doesn’t see the brave behind him with the knife. A hand buries itself in his hair and a blade slides across his throat from ear to ear._  
 _Dean Winchester comes galloping up and shoots the brave without slowing down. Adam watches him as his sight dims. He looks at Adam for a moment and there’s pain in his eyes for a lost friend, and beneath it a darker shadow of a soul bartered away._  
  
 _Dean leaves him to bleed out and goes to Sam where he struggles to get his limbs to work._  
  
 _Adam closes his eyes on the scene and opens them again in the Shadowlands, his soul clenched in one hand and the blade in the other._

 

 

 

 

NOW:  
Adam falls asleep sometime between bites of pie and wakes up to voices inside the cabin. Sam. Dean. Someone else.  
  
“You’re absolutely sure?” Sam asks.  
  
“Sure as anything, cream cake. Fred was a witch before all this went down, she still has some reference books squirreled away.”  
  
“I’m officially not sure how I feel at this moment,” Dean says.  
  
“Join the club. I signed up to get my humanity back, not go into an inter-dimensional pissing contest. Still, at least it’s not boring.”  
  
“I think I’d rather be bored,” says Dean.  
  
“Yeah, well, I’ve been known to pick pockets, start love quadrangles, and purloin squad cars when I get bored. Fred keeps me as busy as possible.”  
  
Adam can’t see anyone, but even he can feel Dean’s interest pique.  
  
Some things never change.  
  
“I don’t even know where we’re going to get half of this stuff,” Sam says with a sigh.  
  
“Leave the holy bones and blood to me, I have someone that owes me a favor. You focus on getting the phoenix ash.”  
  
“Where are we going to find a phoenix? I only knew one and he’s dead now for over a century.”  
  
“Then you go back to that century and pick up those ashes,” the woman says, drawing out the words.  The implication of  _you’re a dumbass_  is strong. “Seriously, it’s like I’m talking to Fred when she’s drunk and stubborn. At least when she’s sober she’s reasonable.”  
  
“Adam’s the only person we know who can travel through time,” says Sam. “We just kind of followed him through the hole he left.  He’s not looking so hot at the moment.”  
  
“Yeah, he’s fucked himself up quite spectacularly.  Definitely a Winchester.”  
  
“Hey,” his brothers say in unison.  
  
“Don’t even try to deny it,” she says, but it’s not mean. It’s almost fond. “Both of you can’t go with him, so I’m gonna recommend Sam. You can keep him stable long enough to get there, get the ashes, and then come back. Dean and I can stay here and keep the angels occupied. The travel part shouldn’t be too hard. We’re already in the exact place it happened, so you’re just going to step backwards a bit and come right back.”  
  
“And if the angels follow us?”  
  
“I brought holy fire molotov cocktails. I’ll share!”  
  
Boots scrape the floorboards and the door opens. Sam and Dean’s voices fade away. Soft footsteps come towards him.  
  
“Wakey, wakey, littlest brother,” the woman says.  
  
Adam blinks his eyes open. An olive skinned woman is smiling down at him, her hair a crazy shade of bubblegum pink.  
  
“I’m Taz, second cousin twice removed, kinda,” she says and sits on the edge of his bed. She puts a hand on his forehead. “You’ve been up to some interesting shenanigans.”  
  
Adam says nothing, but he goes pale when she holds up his scrap of soul. Several blood-caked strands are woven back into place.  
  
“I’m not gonna yell at you, honey.” She places the scrap on her knee and smooths it out with gentle reverent fingers. “What most people don’t realize about souls is just how precious they are. Everyone thinks they know, but they only see the soul in terms of what it means to their religion or what they can gain by having one. But it’s so much bigger than that, you know?”  
  
Adam swallows. He nods. “I know.”  
  
“Yeah, I figure you do. I used to be a reaper, once upon a time, before I started working with Fred and earned my humanity back. I’ve held millions of souls in my hands, ferrying them across borders. Every one of them felt different, no matter how young or old or what they had experienced. Once I held one so thin it was finer than a string of atoms. I was so afraid I would drop it and the soul would just evaporate.”  
  
Taz keeps her eyes on Adam’s soul scrap, keeps running her finger across it like she can stretch it back out to it’s proper size, like she can restore it by sheer force of will.  
  
“Souls are the fabric of the universe. All the universes,” she goes on. “Birthing and dying just shifts your fabric to another part of the cloth, but you’ve been tearing holes when you jump. And then stripping your soul away to change the time lines, it’s ended up reworking entire pieces of the pattern.”  
  
“That was the plan,” Adam says.  
  
“But it’s not the only way to do it. It’s just a messy short cut.”  
  
“I didn’t have the luxury of time.”  
  
Taz gives him a sad smile.  
  
“None of us do, honey.”  
  
Adam sits up. His head is woozy and he feels utterly drained. He leans against the wall and considers her.  
  
“What’s up with the phoenix ash?”  
  
She doesn’t even look surprised that he was listening to that.  
  
“The angels and demons are pissed their apocalypse has been almost totally derailed. They came for you in the Shadowlands after Rabbit took your soul. They’re coming for you again now that Sam and Dean have put you under their protection.”  
  
Adam clenches his fists.  
  
“I know that.  I’m not consenting to Michael."  He says it every time.  It's one of those thing, Adam thinks.  Maybe if he says it enough it'll come true.  
  
“You aren’t as strong as you once were,” Taz points out, unaware that Adam has never been that strong. “If Michael did gain consent, this last bit of your soul would fry up and he’d have an empty vessel for his use. Anyway, phoenix ash, plus a few other hard to come by goodies, are going into a spell I can do. That spell should buy us enough time for the cavalry to arrive.”  
  
"I thought we were safe here because of Dean's tree."  
  
"Fred failed to take into account how pissed off heaven is because I think they're sending everyone."  
  
Sam comes in before Adam can asks her how she knows that.  
  
“We’re ready,” he says.  
  
Taz looks to Adam. He realizes she’s waiting for him to say okay, that he’ll do it.  
  
“We can stop everything if we get the ash?” he asks.  Because this, this is it.  This is the last time Adam can survive a complete death.  His soul is smaller than the palm of his hand and as ragged as a puppy’s old chew toy.   
  
“We’ll give ‘em hell,” Taz says.  
  
That will have to do, Adam thinks.  
  
They go out to the tree. Dean is standing with his arms crossed while the plants on the ground shift and grow around him to create what looks like a devil’s trap except for the symbols used inside. It’s intricate and nothing like Adam has ever seen.  
  
“Stand here,” Taz directs Adam into the circle of plants.  
  
Adam doesn’t want to step on them- most are still moving around- but Taz just tugs on his arm. He goes with her. The plants keep moving underfoot, oblivious, and Adam curls his toes at the sheer strangeness of the sensation.  
  
“Sam is going to help you get to and from the past,” Taz says. She straightens out Adam’s hoodie and hair, like that makes a difference. Then she stops and presses the scrap of soul into Adam’s chest. Nothing happens, and then a weird pulling sensation happens and it absorbs through his clothing and into his body. “There. Now it’s safe.”  
  
Adam rubs at his chest. Tingles run up and down his skin, kind of like ants, but it doesn’t hurt.  
  
Sam steps forward and puts his giant hand on the back of Adam’s neck. Dean steps up to both of them and touches a finger to their throats and then to their ears. Adam shivers at the contact.  
  
“What was that?”  
  
“A little something to help you get by,” Dean says and steps back. “Tell the old man I said hello, he's waiting for you.  And give him a story before you come back.” The last part is directed at Sam.  
  
A light flashes in the night sky, bright and arching overhead. Familiar high pitched screams fill the air.  
  
“Make it a quick trip, boys,” Taz says. She hefts a holy oil filled whiskey bottle and lights a match.  
  
Adam closes his eyes and concentrates. It’s harder than he anticipates. The push-pull sensation is weak. He grasps for it as the world lights up red through his eyelids.  
  
“Relax, let it come,” Sam says.  
  
Adam gets a hold of it. He fidgets until he finds a weak spot, and then he pulls it open.


	5. Fifth Chapter

NOW:  
They come out in the sunlight. The day is so bright that it blinds Adam for a moment and spots dance in front of his eyes. He sways with the wind. Sam is there to keep him upright.  
  
The village is deserted, but not yet in ruins. The pueblo houses spill into each other and stand upright, but there is no one living there to give the village a spark. No one except an old man sitting on a blanket in the shade of the tree and the two young cowboys standing behind him.  
  
“Welcome,” the old man says. The language sounds different on one level, but Adam understands him perfectly. “You must be Mochni’s brothers.”  
  
“How did you know?” Adam asks.  
  
“A vision,” the man says. “My name is Hania, I am the medicine man to my tribe.”  
  
“It is an honor to meet you,” Sam says. “My brother speaks highly of you.”  
  
Hania smiles. “His story will always be told among my people.”  
  
The youngest cowboy, a man probably Sam’s age, steps forward and offers his hand.  
  
“My name is Jimmy, Jimmy Bone. I rode with Dean for a while. This is David Elkins. We hunted together with Sam Colt before he retired.”  
  
This seems to mean something to Sam, because he lights up in a way Adam hasn’t seen since any of the times Sam received his Stanford acceptance letters, or the few times Dean went to see him before John went missing and Sam introduced Jessica.  
  
Adam tunes out the introductions as a wave of weariness settles over him. God, he just wants to sleep and not feel.  
  
“We came to get any of the phoenix ash that may have survived,” Sam says. He squeezes Adam’s shoulder to bring him back to the present. “We’re fighting a battle back home.”  
  
Hania produces a clay pot from a satchel and offers it up to Sam. “The day Mochni defeated the thunderbird and became our sacred tree, the ancestors spoke to me. They told me of the battles you three will face and what you would need to win them.”  
  
Adam peers over Sam’s hands as he opens the clay pot. Inside are black ashes as fine as dust. Lying on top is a twisted lump of silver metal.  
  
“Thank you for these, and for taking care of Dean while he was here,” Sam says. He puts the pot on the ground and kneels in front of the old man. “Dean asked me to give you this.”  
  
Sam places his fingers on Hania’s face. The old man closes his eyes and draws in a sharp breath. Minutes pass and then Sam moves back. The old man smiles.  
  
“Thank you. I will tell these stories to the children and the grandchildren. They will know of Mochni, who died for my people, and you, Chankoowashtay, who trick the unworthy and reward the deserving, and of Anat’halne, who jumps from Grandmother’s threads to weave new stories.”  
  
A rumble starts in the clear sky. Adam jumps and stumbles. Sam collects the pot and steps back.  
  
“We thank you,” Sam says and light erupts from the clear sky. Jimmy surges forward and grabs hold of Sam’s other arm.  
  
“Protect him!” Jimmy shouts back to Elkins.  
  
“Let's, Adam,” Sam says, crowding around Adam and pushing him toward the rip.  
  
The rip is still open, a tattered thing he doesn’t know how to close. They just step right through it, and the sound of the screaming gets worse as night falls around them.  
  
“You made it!” Taz says and then she pulls up short. She crows out a laugh. “Jimmy.”  
  
Taz launches herself at their tag along, smothering him in a hug.  
  
“Go join big sis, she’s frying angel ass.” Taz pushes him away towards the left where Dean, Fred, and two other guys Adam has never seen before are spread out and fighting against a group of angels in suits with long pointed swords. It’s angel swords against earth, water, air, and snarling teeth.  
  
“You got him?” Sam asks, handing over the pot. Taz ducks under Adam’s arm and takes his weight.  
  
“Oh yeah, I got him."  
  
They go to the cabin.  Taz deposits him on the bed.  
  
“You stay here. I’m gonna ward the fuck out of this cabin and then go join in the festivities.”  
  
Then she’s gone and he’s alone.  
  
Well, not totally.  
  
The shadows move in the corner of the room and a barefoot man with a guitar slung over his back steps into view.  
  
“Well, you’ve taken the initiative more than I’d ever imagined.” The man sets his guitar against the wall and takes the chair next to the bed. He extends a hand. “Name’s Coyote.”  
  
Coyote’s grip is firm, calloused.  
  
Coyote leans back in the chair and props his feet up on the bedside table.  
  
“How do you play into this?” Adam asks.  
  
“I’m the one that started it all, with a little help from you,” he says with a nod. “You see, once upon a time I was in California and I followed a time rip to an abandoned bookstore. I wasn’t the only one following the trail and, for lack of a better term, someone got the best of me. It happens on occasion. The sorcerer trapped me in a spell net that drew energy off of the time rip so he could then strip my power from me for himself. Complicated business, and it attracted the attentions of a certain gangly Winchester in the area.”  
  
Adam can see it play out in his mind, almost as if he were there. Sam looking at newspapers, body counts rising. Researching between classes and then sneaking out past his high roommate, the glint of a silver blade in his hand.  
  
“Funny thing about time rips. Spend enough time in the presence of one and you get to see portions of history play out around you. When Sam entered the building, the time rip fed off of him and I could see everything stretching backwards and forwards, all the way up to that fateful jump into the cage and that chupacabra stumbling around the wasteland of nothingness.”  
  
Adam shudders.  
  
“And then Sam, in that adorable clumsiness, weakened the spell and I got free. If there’s one thing I learned in all my time, it’s that knowledge is never to be ignored. So I took a leaf from your book and started changing the game board. Though I will say this, I am continually surprised by you Winchesters. Even when you’re given a path, you still take as many detours and back roads as possible.”  
  
Coyote raises his hand and a tumbler of whiskey appears in it. He salutes Adam and drinks it down.  
  
“If this was your plan all along, why the hell didn’t you help out sooner?” Adam asks. He’s angry, so angry, but it fizzles out before he can work up a sweat. His heart is doing a weird stutter in his chest.  
  
Death is creeping up on Adam once more.  
  
Coyote just raises his eyebrows. “I leave the marionette strings to the angels and demons, pup. They still think humans can work that way. This is your story, your choice. A story is never so powerful as when it comes naturally.”  
  
“Well, thanks, I’m glad we were entertaining enough for you. But heaven is outside right now trying to kill us all and put it back on track. So what are you gonna do about that?”  
  
Coyote plants his feet on the floor and leans forward. His eyes flash. The hair on the back of Adam’s neck rises.  
  
“That’s your future being decided out there, pup. You tell me: what are  _you_  willing to do about it?”  
  
“If I go out there, Michael will still posses me and we’ll be right back where we started because I made myself too goddamned  _weak_  trying to change my future in a million different worlds.”  
  
“You plucked a million versions of your soul straight out of their worlds and put them in limbo where no one could get to them,” Coyote says, eyes glowing yellow. “Every body you took over forced its normal soul out so you could take its place. But those souls weren’t marked as having died, so no reaper collected them for transport.”  
  
Adam blinks, mouth working without sound.  
  
“Then what- where are they?”  
  
Coyote reaches inside his vest and draws out a satchel with spiral patterns beaded into the leather. He undoes the drawstring and opens it, then tips it so Adam can see.  
  
Inside glows with a million squirming lights like seeds. Adam feels a tug so fierce it takes his breath away and he makes a strangled noise in his throat.  
  
“A soul from every life you’ve ever lived. This bag contains more power than every nuclear reactor combined, yet they are so fragile that a snap of the fingers could snuff them all out one by one.” Coyote hands him the bag.  
  
Adam freezes, eyes locked on the contents. He doesn’t hardly breathe.  
  
“Everything starts out as what you see here. Single souls, single lives. I started this way. So did Rabbit, so did Kokopelli, even Grandmother with her web of worlds stretched across the branches of the tree. The only thing that separates gods from humans is a simple choice and the action that follows it.  
  
“Your brothers made their choice to become who they are. Now it is your turn.”  
  
Adam looks down at the bag of souls  in his hands.  His entire focus since he found the soul spell has been to end this, to finish resetting the Winchester story.  He has lived and died in many interesting times, but he has always come back, albeit more damaged and cracked each time.  
  
Dying isn't scary.  Being erased...Adam had convinced himself it was the best option in order to avoid the cage and the nothing.  But he likes living, loves being alive.  As painful as it is it's never so bad as the place he goes after the cage.  
  
"Nothing is set in stone.  That's what Rabbit told me."  
  
A wild grin cuts its way across Coyote's face.  
  
"If it was we would not be sitting in this cabin having this conversation."  
  
Warmth bleeds into Adam's clammy hands.  He breathes past the erratic flutter of his heart.  
  
It looks like tonight is full of faith leaps.  
  
"Okay," Adam says.

 

 

  


 

 

  
_SHADOWLANDS:_   
_Deep inside the tree is a dimly lit world. It rests cradled in the roots, light flickering like a dying bulb. Webs and dust surround this world, fine layers of protection, hiding it from prying eyes._

_Adam finds it by accident, stumbling around between worlds like an idiot. He trips over the roots and lands right next to it._

_The roots creak and move beneath him, drawing the world in close without holding it too tight, precious as a delicate egg. Something about it makes Adam pause, even with the earth shaking and groaning as dust and chunks of dirt fall from the ceiling._

_Adam tentatively reaches out and touches it._

_He comes out in a void of chaos. Light, dark, matter, the nothingness, it all swirls around fighting for dominance in a place of cold and hot, orbiting the burning fury of the sun. These elements collide, break apart, and form new shapes in an ever changing array of creation and destruction._

“ _The first world,” the old woman says. She appears next to Adam and points out new shapes emerging from the disarray. “The first of us came from this womb.”_

_Souls like sparks flare up in the mess, growing and changing. They collide with others, sometimes breaking away, other times merging to form something new. Even as the chaos settles and the earth and other planets emerge from the mixture the soul-sparks continue on their way._

_The souls that joined together went on living. Adam sees years of history pass by, gods rising from stories and changing with the tellings, always growing, always moving. Some came together with the joining of different faiths, fusing into one god who then spawned angels, who then spawned demons._

“ _To stay still is to die,” the woman says. “To move forward is to flourish, no matter what name or guise you assume.”_

 

__

 

 

NOW:  
Adam exits the cabin and enters a battlefield. The sky is on fire. The clang of swords and screams and hurled insults fill his ears. Dean and Sam are fighting back to back against a handful of angels. Fred is off to the side moving through them with brutal grace. He cannot see Jimmy or the other two men, but he can hear them somewhere beyond the tree.  
  
Coyote rushes past him to fight, too. No longer a man, he transforms into a twelve-foot tall version of his namesake. He walks on his hind legs and tears into angels that swarm his sides. Not far away is Rabbit doing the same, and a humpbacked man is using his flute to stab through an angel’s chest.  
  
Adam walks into the fray and shouts at the top of his lungs.  
  
“MICHAEL.”  
  
The fighting does not stop, but one particular angel breaks away and appears in front of Adam.  
  
Michael is wearing a secondary vessel’s face, but Adam will never be able to mistake him. The archangel exudes righteous fire and a burning desire unlike any other. It’s an aura bleeding out of his vessel. Adam’s chest seizes. He remembers being filled with that, so much so that it threatened to burn out his very existence.  
  
“Adam,” Michael says. He has blood on his clothing and the end of his sword. “This course you are taking is not your intended path.”  
  
“I’ve learned to make my own path,” Adam says. “It’s a thing that’s been going around.”  
  
“I’m sure it had seemed like a good thing to do, considering how your brothers turned out, but Adam, look at yourself. You’ve tried to do the same thing and you’ve wasted away to something barely real.”  
  
Michael draws in close and leans forward as if to console a friend.  
  
“You’ve brought more pain and suffering onto yourself than I ever can. Your soul is down to bare threads. Once they unravel you’ll be less than a ghost. Please,” Michael implores. “Let me in so I may help you. I can help you heal from this. You don’t need to be in this kind of agony.”  
  
The words play on Adam’s tired mind. So tantalizing, the warmth so radiant. Being Michael’s vessel had not always been bad. There were times Michael had cocooned Adam in protection, kept him safe.  Until he got out of the cage, at least.  
  
Adam forces his eyes open and looks at Michael.  
  
“This is my story to write,” Adam says.  
  
There are strands, highways, dimly lit pathways between every world in existence, past, present, and future. Hidden, shadowed, many never even know they exist.  
  
Adam takes hold of Michael’s arm and looks into his eyes. The power of his million souls, stitched together and attached to his current damaged one, link together in an unbreakable chain leading back to the heart of the tree’s first world. Michael tries to pull away, but Adam’s grip is fueled by soul, by chaos, and the tiniest seeds of change he’s laid in the wake of every choice committed.  
  
“To stay still is to die,” he says and draws Michael to him.  
  
Michael’s head rears back, face bright with confusion. Adam pulls him in and Adam's fingers seek out the rocket flare of grace twining around the insides of his current vessel. The grace is burning hot, a thousand suns caught in angelic grace, fueling the particles of a sentient star.  
  
Adam breathes it in. Michael’s grace fills his lungs and spreads out, cementing inside the cracks of his being, fusing bone and muscle and ligament with the many souls, creating a whole.  
  
Michael’s sword goes through Adam’s lung just below his heart. A wrenching scream fills the air as Michael’s vessel drops to his knees.  
  
Adam lets him go and stumbles back. He pulls the sword out of himself. The wound bleeds light and then closes.  
  
Michael fights and fidgets, but his grace settles into its new home. The spark of personality, of memories, that made Michael Michael, join with Adam’s own. He is neither Adam or Michael anymore. He is both. He is neither.  
  
He is something completely new.  
  
Adam lifts his head. The fighting has stopped completely and every eye has turned to him.  
  
“What have you done?” Raphael demands, voice ragged as he stares at Adam in confused horror.  
  
“I rewrote my ending,” Adam says. “God left us a long time ago with one story, but what we’ve failed to see is that the true nature of a story is never set. It’s always changing. It’s supposed to.”  
  
“We cannot go against the word of God, this is blasphemy,” Zachariah yells.  
  
“This is a story’s true course,” Adam says. He draws on the power of Michael’s grace and says to the angels, “You will leave this battlefield now. Go where you will. Decide your own paths.”  
  
The cacophony of emotions and energy washes over the area and smothers his senses. They want to stay, to fight, but the command is given. They disappear, one by one, until only Raphael and Castiel remain.  
  
Raphael points his sword at Adam.  
  
“You have brought the wrath of heaven down upon your head,” he growls and then he is gone.  
  
Castiel stays for a moment, eyebrows drawn together as he regards Adam. His eyes flicker skyward, back to Adam, and then he is gone in a flutter of wings.  
The wind rustles through the branches of Dean’s tree. Part of the branches are blacked from fire, but it is alive. Dean and Sam approach him, tentative smiles on their faces. Sam reaches out to embrace him. Dean ruffles his head.  
  
“This has gotta be a first,” Dean says, voice light. “Eating an angel to win a fight. Sounds more like a porno.”  
  
Adam punches Dean’s shoulder. Sam rolls his eyes, shakes his head. Dean grins, unrepentant.  
  
“I could go for a beer about right now,” Fred says, flicking a bit of gore from her shirt. “Dean, you’re buying.”

 

 

 

 

LATER:  
The stretch of road is deserted and broken down.  It doesn’t see many vehicles these day if the weeds pushing through the cracks and threading through the crumbling asphalt say anything.  The sky is a too-bright blue, washed out and hard to look at.  The fabric of the universe flutters and fluctuates, just barely out of sight, like the folds of an invisibility cloak settling into place.  
  
It’s beautiful.  It’s distracting.  It’s more than words and yet less at the same time.  
  
Being a demigod- or a juiced up human/thief of angel grace, whatever- is weird.  Adam alternates between feeling too big for his skin and like he’s trying to burst out of it Hulk-style.  Michael still fights, but even an archangel old enough to remember the beginning of the world is outmatched against millions of Adam’s souls.  It’s like a bone fragment worming its way through his body; irritating, but not lethal.  
  
Adam’s learning, though.  
  
Three months have passed since the angels came down to take him.  Since then has been radio silence from heaven and hell, a breath held between sharpened teeth.  They are living on borrowed time, as Dean put it afterwards, grinning and battle high, oblivious to Sam’s and Adam’s eye rolls.  
  
Dean was not wrong, though.  Adam feels a swell of pride beneath his ribs; he’s the one that stole those extra moments.  
  
There is a storm coming.  Adam can feel it’s approach like a growl crawling up his spine and he’s flying blind again.  They all are, and how funny is it that Adam can so completely relate to Sarah Connor driving down that dark highway, unable to see farther than how far the reach of the headlights, after fighting the big picture for so long?  
  
But he’s not alone.  
  
Sam and Dean stand next to him on the road, hands in their pockets, feet planted on the road.  They've stayed with him, even when Fred and the others left and Coyote disappeared with Rabbit again.  Adam is still waiting for the other shoe to drop- he will be for a while, it's not something he can just up and trust just yet- but he's also got a measure of hope burning in his chest along with angel grace that hasn't taken him over.  Dean and Sam, they will always be wrapped up in each other, but it's...relaxed now.  Death is removed from the equation.  They don't need deals or sacrifices or blinders to keep each other close.  
  
They've made a place for Adam again.  It's not on the fringe and it's not behind them.  Adam is beside them.  
  
Sam bumps Adam's shoulder with his own as a truck engine grumbles up the broken road.  The truck, a monster of metal on jacked up tires with claw marks on the hood, comes around a curve.  It rolls to a stop, motor still running.  Adam can feel it vibrate through his feet.  
  
The driver’s side door opens and boots hit dirt.  The door closes with a snap.  
  
Adam squints at John Winchester as he approaches.  
  
“Hey, dad,” Adam says.

 

 

 

_THEN-NOW-LATER:_   
_There are certain names that have power, that people call upon for protection, for guidance, for fruitful endeavors. People pray to these names, belief stitched with hope and set free on the sloping back of a night’s breeze._   
  
_I pray to thee Dean Winchester, protect my family from all harm._   
  
_I pray to thee Sam Winchester, steady my aim and shield my back as I go to war._   
  
_I pray to thee Adam, angel of grace, give me the strength and courage to find my way._

 

 

 

 


End file.
